Allies and NME
by NetRaptor
Summary: The NME airship Fellstorm is coming to capture Maria. While Knuckles, Sonic and the rest of the gang race to defend her and the newly-repaired Angel Island, Perfect Chaos waits in the sea below the island, craving blood and justice. They'll never survive battle on two fronts. To save his friends' lives, Knuckles must make a heart-breaking choice.
1. Chapter 1

Note: This is the third story in a trilogy. Enjoy them in order!  
Story 1: Knuckles Boom  
Story 2: The Master Emerald's Daughter  
Story 3: Allies and NME

* * *

Knuckles sat on a ledge in Angel Island's weight room, knees pulled to his chest. One hand pressed a headset into his ear. Twenty feet away, four huge iron spheres hung on monstrous chains, swaying imperceptibly to balance the island in the air. The only light came from a ring of glowing light crystals around the walls, which barely dispelled the gloom.  
In the headset, Angel Island's artificial intelligence spoke quietly. He was named Ramussan, had a voice like a radio DJ, and enjoyed destroying intruders. This was the first contact he had with the island's Guardian.  
"As you can see, sir," Ramussan was saying in low, reverent tones, "the invader successfully repaired three fourths of the island's systems. The top two floors are functioning flawlessly. The third floor retains some damage, but I was able to repair the chaos reactor successfully."  
"What about the other two floors?" Knuckles said, his voice echoing in the huge room.  
"I have been able to retain control of the repair drones the invader sent into the power center. I will direct them to repair what I can."  
Knuckles grunted. A huge pressure seemed to weigh on his head and shoulders-the awareness of an implacable enemy coming to murder him and his friends. "What's the ETA on the NME ship?"  
"Five days, eleven hours," Ramussan replied.  
"Can we take them?"  
Ramussan didn't answer immediately. "That ... depends ... on whether the Mechanic can repair the ARK cannon."  
Knuckles massaged the bridge of his nose. "How bad is it?"  
"Oh, well, you know. Three hundred years of neglect isn't kind to delicate electronics. He'll need parts."  
Of course he would. The island was a mile in the air. It wasn't like they could run home to grab a few things. "Do you have a list?"  
"Tails is slowly updating me as he explores the cannon. So far the list has fifty-seven items. Many we can repurpose from the invader's robots that I destroyed."  
Knuckles sighed. "You know, I just wanted my island back. I didn't want to take it to war."  
Ramussan said in a low voice, "There are those who have searched for it for many years, sir. You found it first by a very narrow margin."  
Knuckles gazed at the weights without seeing them. He had only found the island because of a storm that washed a chaos emerald ashore. Through it, he had felt the pull of the Master Emerald and Maria's silent plea for help. Now he was responsible for the island, his friends' lives, and possibly the lives of everyone in the archipelago. NME would likely consider all of Bygone to be collateral damage. He clenched his fists. He would do whatever it took to stop their enemies and save his friends, no matter what it cost him.  
"What should I do first? You know, to defend it?"  
The AI's response was decisive. "Find Maria, sir. She is safe nowhere else."

* * *

The day Angel Island floated into the sky was the greatest day of Gladiolus Lark's life.  
It began the way it always did - with her mother's voice. "Rise and shine, Glad."  
Gladiolus hadn't been asleep, not really. Curled on her cot in the corner of their two-room shack, she had been dreaming of flying. Not on an airplane or a glider, not with wings, just ... flying free through the air, with the clouds billowing beneath her. Out in the sky, nobody knew she was dying.  
Now she climbed out of bed, pushing back her mane of dreadlocks. While most echidnas grew long, spine-like dreadlocks, Gladiolus's hung to her knees. They were the one beautiful thing about her. She checked her left eye in the mirror as she washed.  
The pupil was completely clouded now, with red lines lacing across the iris. Inflamed blood vessels covered the white of her eye. When she closed her good eye, the bad one saw wavering colors that weren't there-auroras of green and white that didn't match the light in the room. She wiped away blood-tinged tears and secured an eyepatch over the monstrosity. It was called Chaos Eye, and there was no cure.  
She had a breakfast of bread and butter, then took her shovel and bucket outside to hunt scrap.  
"Don't talk to strangers," her mother told her at the door. Her mother, Poppy, was a thin violet echidna with stringy dreadlocks, her eyes stretched too wide with worry. "Don't let the salvage rats see where you dig. Don't draw attention to your eye."  
Gladiolus kissed Poppy's cheek. "Yes, Mother. I'll be careful."  
Glad never spoke to anyone in their small town called Pilings, even though she knew most of the villagers by sight. They avoided her in return-the thin echidna girl with the ludicrously long hair and the eyepatch.  
She stopped by a small shrine on her way through the trees down to the sea cliffs. She touched the little dry stone bowl beneath a weathered echidna statue. "Grant me good luck in my hunting today, Lord Fith. I'll share my takings." Gladiolus always kept her word to the god, sharing whatever food or drink she was able to buy with her scrap money. There was a much larger statue deep in the jungle that was said to convey messages from Fith himself. Someday she would find the way there and speak to it. Maybe it could cure her eye before ... Well. Maybe it wasn't wise to hope too much.  
There were a great many coves and cliffs on the eastern side of Bygone Island. No fine sandy beaches, like those of the west side that attracted tourists. The east side boasted one small, rocky beach, often strewn with rusted machine parts that discouraged anyone from going barefoot. Their town was so insignificant that not even Eggman bothered with it. Gladiolus secretly wished he would, just to see what would happen.  
 _Talk to no one_ , her mother had instructed over and over. _Don't let them close enough to see your eye. They'll drive us away._  
Gladiolus never looked at anyone, save sideways, through her long dreadlocks, hiding the eyepatch and the red tears that trickled from beneath it. Chaos eye was an abomination, the doctor had told her mother. She would be dead within a few years.  
But she didn't think about that much. Today she walked south, following the coastline as it curved westward. There wasn't much scrap left on the beaches, so she had been digging in the sandstone cliffs opposite Angel Island. Enough broken metal had come to light to pay rent, with enough left over to buy food.  
As she walked, she swung her bucket and hummed, gazing at the brilliant blue ocean, the wash of cirrus clouds like great sprays of feathers. Angel Island was blue and green, its forests giving way to a central mountain peak of bare stone. Often she wished she could swim to it, explore, hide from the world. Her chaos eye showed her the outline of the island in faint pink. Lately there had been shafts of gold, too.  
Glad climbed to her spot among the cliffs, set down her bucket, and began digging. It was hard work, but mindless. She had time to wish, as she often did, that she could run away, leave everything behind, go out and live life. She had so little time left-maybe two years, if the disease didn't spread too quickly. But she couldn't leave her mother and aunt so easily. It took all three of them to gather enough scrap to live on.  
A long strip of gleaming metal came to light, hardly rusted at all. Glad tugged it free and deposited it in her bucket. As she lifted the shovel again, the ground trembled under her boots.  
She froze, gripping her shovel. Earthquake. The ground rippled underfoot, sand cascading down the cliffs around her. She cautiously stepped into the open, so if one collapsed, she wouldn't be buried.  
The quake went on, growing worse and worse. A distant crashing drew her attention. Glad turned to face the sea.  
Angel Island was moving.  
She gasped, dropping her shovel, covering her mouth with both hands. The island was rising out of the sea, slowly, impossibly, water streaming from it in white sheets. Her chaos eye saw blinding bars of red and yellow light flashing from it like floodlights.  
The earthquake intensified. Glad stumbled to her knees and sat in the rocks. What was happening? Why was the island moving and glowing like that? Fear of the unknown welled up inside her-but along with it came an unreasoning wash of joy. She threw her arms wide and laughed without understanding why. The island that she had seen every day of her life was clawing its way out of the sea's heavy embrace.  
Angel Island rose higher and higher, revealing its stony underbelly like a series of inverted mountains. Glad watched, still laughing, tears blurring her vision. Or was she weeping? She didn't understand and she didn't care. It was the most wondrous, fantastical sight.  
The island, free of the sea, rose into the sky, clouds forming around its central peak. Waves beat against the coast, wetting Gladiolus where she sat. She didn't care. She sat there, rocking back and forth, laughing and crying by turns. Something amazing had happened without explanation. It was a miracle from Fith himself.  
The island didn't fly away, as she thought it would. It found an altitude it preferred, about a mile up, and hung there in the blue. Clouds piled around it as it created its own weather system.  
Slowly Glad calmed. She climbed to her feet and retrieved her shovel. Even in the face of miracles, work must still be done. She walked two steps toward the cliffs and stopped. Someone else was crying nearby.  
Had someone else witnessed this incredible sight? Her wariness of people warred with her desire to have the miracle confirmed by other eyes. Glad crept around the rocks and peeked.  
A human girl in a tattered hospital gown sat on the beach, doubled over, clutching herself and crying in a deep, choking way, as if in pain. Tangled blond hair cascaded down her back.  
Glad hesitated. She'd never seen a human before. Did they bite? Would she hate her for her eyepatch? She nervously wiped her muzzle, hoping it wasn't too stained.  
Slowly she picked her way through the rocks to the girl. The girl took no notice of her, still doubled up as if cradling a wound.  
"Excuse me," Glad said. "Are you hurt?"  
Her voice was barely above a whisper. The human girl heard it and looked up. Her eyes were the color of the top of the sky at noon. Violent light flickered inside them, unnatural, chaotic. It looked alarmingly like the lights she saw through her bad eye.  
"Who are you?" the girl asked.  
"Gladiolus," Glad replied, before remembering that she was never supposed to tell anyone her name. "I-I heard you crying. Are you-do you need help?" She couldn't look at those terrifying eyes. She focused on the girl's dirty left hand instead.  
The human girl gulped a sob and wiped her eyes on her gown. "I'm Maria. He left him to die. I had to punish him."  
Glad took several steps back. Punishing someone? This Maria must be insane. She had obviously escaped from a hospital, and she must be dangerous.  
Maria took her by surprise by pointing at the floating island. "Look at it! It's beautiful!"  
Glad glanced at the distant blueness of Angel Island. "Yes, I saw it rise. It was wonderful." The words were too small for the amazement of the event. But talking to a stranger had made her painfully self-conscious. She wanted to cover her eyepatch with both hands.  
"It was." Maria dried her face on her gown. She struggled to her feet. She had no shoes, which was unfortunate on the rocky shore. She gazed around forlornly. "Where are we?"  
"The east side of Bygone Island," Glad replied.  
"I need a place to rest," Maria said softly, swaying a little. "Is there a place nearby where I might stay?"  
Glad imagined her mother's face to see her bringing a crazy human up the path. But she had also just witnessed an island float. Right now, anything was possible. The rules had changed, although she couldn't grasp how.  
A rogue wave washed up the beach, slapping Maria's bare feet with foam. She gasped. Glad leaped forward and caught her arm before she could fall.  
Light blazed through her eyepatch and into her chaos eye. This time, other sensation accompanied it.  
Maria was not a human. She blazed before Glad in a pillar of light, spirals of chaos energy flickering off her. Around their feet curled water that was not water. It was the transparent feeler of an immense monster that sought Maria. And it had touched Glad, too.  
Glad yanked her hand away with a gasp. The wave had already sucked away, back down the rocks into the sea. But something was foaming out there, breaking among the rocks.  
"Can you run?" Glad whispered.  
Maria nodded and held out a hand. "Be careful. My control is not so good when I'm tired."  
Glad took her hand, and this time nothing happened. She tugged the human up the beach, along a trail to the top of the cliffs. Down below, more waves climbed the beach, completely different from the rest of the tide, which was going out.  
"What is that?" Glad panted. "What's in the water?"  
"An angry being," Maria gasped, clutching her chest. "He knows where I am."  
Glad tugged her along, a terrible horror growing inside her. It was like swimming in the sea and spying a vast shark-shaped shadow passing beneath her. She wanted to ask more questions, but she didn't know what to ask. Instead, they fled, ducking into the trees.  
They left the angry water behind them. After a while they slowed to a walk, Maria breathing heavily. Glad kept her eyes on the ground. Even now, she kept catching glimpses of light from Maria with her chaos eye. She was touching the hand of an angel. This must be Fith's answer to her request at the shrine that morning.  
She stopped walking and faced Maria. "I saw what you are."  
Maria pushed back her tangled hair and regarded her echidna companion. "I felt when you did."  
"You're an angel of Fith," Glad said.  
Maria was nonplussed. Her mouth dropped open, the blue depths of her eyes troubled. "No - I'm no angel, Gladiolus."  
Glad lifted her head and studied her doubtfully. "But ... but I saw you. You're a being of light and chaos."  
"That may be so," Maria replied. "Yet I am not an angel, although perhaps I have not gone unnoticed by Fith. Come. Tell me about him."  
They walked on. Glad hung her head, confused and embarrassed at being so frank. "How do you not know Fith? He's the over-God of Chaos."  
Maria sighed. "I'm human. I wasn't educated on the Mobian gods."  
"You can't be human." Glad blinked at her. "I saw you all ... changed. And that thing in the water wants you."  
They both looked out at the ocean. The waves were far out, normal for low tide. It was impossible to tell if a monster lurked beneath them.  
"I am the Master Emerald's daughter," Maria said in a low voice. "Begotten of science and chaos. I must go to Angel Island, but right now I haven't the strength."  
Shivers raced through Glad at these words. Maria was strange, insane, yet power burned within her that attracted Glad like a moth to a lantern. She opened her mouth to say something profound, but all that came out was, "How? Can you fly there?"  
Maria smiled and didn't reply. Instead she scanned the trees of the forest, as if hunting for something. "I have a friend who will take me there. But he behaved badly."  
"The one you punished?"  
"Yes."  
Glad was afraid to ask how a chaos angel might punish someone. Instead, she said, "My house is up by Pilings, if you want to rest there for a while."  
"That sounds lovely," Maria murmured.


	2. Chapter 2

Deep in the jungle, a black hedgehog sat on the ruined steps of an ancient temple. The bricks were buried in drifts of leaves, and tree roots had forced some of them apart. Still, nothing but lichen marred the statue.  
It was a life-sized statue of an echidna, made with one hand outstretched. Blue lights lit its eyes and flowed through fiber optic cables that ran through the stone. Shadow sat with his back to it. He knew very well what the Speaker did if you gazed into its eyes too long. But he could still communicate with it.  
"I could make you Island Crew," it wheedled in his head. "You would make an amazing Wizard."  
"I don't want to join their stupid island," Shadow growled through his teeth. "I need you to make Maria love me again. Just me."  
"I have no control over matters of the heart," the Speaker replied.  
"But you can mess with people's heads!" Shadow exclaimed. "Put memories and compulsions! So you could do that much. Remind her that I'm all she has. I'm the most important."  
The Speaker didn't reply.  
Shadow growled and dug his fingers into the red spines on top of his head. He had waited so long for Maria-fifty lonely years-and now she was back, and he was being forced to share her. He was tied to her telepathically, through their shared DNA, through the symbiotic chaos aura exchange. He should be the most important person in her universe. Instead, she accepted strength from that imbecilic echidna and a stupid robot. A robot! It wasn't fair.  
Hunger and thirst gnawed him. He had spent almost a whole day and night in the secret underground lab, reliving nightmare upon nightmare. Perhaps that was one reason for his anger.  
Shadow rose to his feet and stalked off into the jungle. A while later he returned with a spiky, watermelon-sized fruit in his arms. He threw it against the stone steps. It split open, revealing a row of yellow, fleshy fruit like yellow bell peppers. He dug one out and bit into it. It tasted like a banana. After living in the jungle for half a lifetime, he knew how to find food.  
"You know that I make no moral judgments," the Speaker said. "I cannot tell you whether these desires are bad or good. But one person is not the property of another."  
Guilt touched Shadow's heart. "I'm not saying she's my property. I just want her to love me." He didn't mention the fading welts across his back where she had struck him for abandoning Knuckles. He knew he had deserved punishment. It had been reprehensible to leave him as the ocean burst in and drowned the ruins.  
"She does love you," the Speaker said. "But love is not something to be hoarded. It spreads and grows. Is she not allowed to extend this grace to others as well as you?"  
Shadow didn't answer. With food came calm, and with calm came regret. Although he still passionately, violently wanted Maria's entire attention, now he had an inkling that perhaps he was being selfish.  
As he finished eating the jackfruit, Maria's voice came into his head. "Shadow, dear. I've gone to a town called Pilings to rest. Please don't stay away too long."  
He rose to his feet, nodded to the Speaker, and set out through the trees. He knew of Pilings-a crappy little village of dirt-poor people. Why had Maria gone there?

* * *

As Gladiolus escorted Maria to her home at the edge of Pilings, her main thought was that they must not be seen. A tattered human dressed in a hospital gown would attract attention of the wrong sort-the kind her mother feared so much. She led Maria around the town, following paths through the trees, where the dense green growth concealed them.  
Their journey went well, but light troubled Glad's chaos eye. Another blazing figure of light was in Pilings somewhere, only this figure was dark red, like a banked fire. Their blurry glowing shape appeared no matter how many trees or buildings were in the way. It disoriented her-she had to close her left eye to focus on where she was going. Her bad eye ached.  
"Are there others-like you?" Glad panted to Maria.  
Maria stopped to pick a thorn from the bottom of her foot. "No. I am the only one of my kind."  
"Well, someone else in the village is all lit up the way you are. Except red, not white."  
Maria straightened, eyes wide. She gazed toward the village, unblinking, for a long moment. "One of them is already here," she murmured. "We must not be found, and I am weak."  
A chill passed through Gladiolus. She pushed back her long dreadlocks. "Hurry. My house is right up the hill."  
Nobody was home when they arrived at the little clapboard shack. Gladiolus's mother and aunt were out digging, and wouldn't be home for hours yet. Responsibility prodded her-she had left her bucket and shovel back at the cliffs. Well, no time to retrieve them. She led Maria to their one easy chair, much faded, but still comfortable. Maria folded into it with a sigh.  
Gladiolus stood there for a moment, lost. What would Mother do? Offer their guest refreshments, of course. She poured a glass of water, and hurriedly sliced a mango. Their mango tree had produced a bumper crop that year, and piles of them stood in a basket by the door. Maria ate the yellow slices slowly, frowning at the strong, sweet taste.  
The red figure outside was moving their way. Glad dithered. Her mother was the one who knew what to do in scary situations. Glad always just went along with it. She made herself stand still and think. If they needed to run, then Maria needed real clothes.  
Glad raced into her mother's room and opened a cedar chest where they stored their winter clothes. She found a blouse and pants that might fit Maria. Humans had such long legs!  
Maria smiled as Glad returned with the clothes. "You're too kind."  
"We can't stay here," Glad replied, looking through space at the red figure with her chaos eye. "They're coming. I think they're pretending to look around."  
Maria gazed at her for a long moment. "Your eye ..."  
Gladiolus automatically covered her eyepatch with one hand. "It's nothing."  
Maria only gazed at her, like her mother waiting for her to confess to selling scrap to buy candy.  
"I have chaos eye," Gladiolus said in a rush. "It lets me see things. But it'll kill me."  
"You poor thing," Maria whispered. "Perhaps ... but no, we have no time. Do you see any other glowing people?"  
Glad turned in a circle, scanning the wavering, aura-tinged world with her blind eye. "Yes. Out in the jungle is a guy with a lot of red and blue. He's like ... fire."  
"That's Shadow," Maria said with satisfaction. "Is he coming?"  
"Yes. But the red person will be here first." Glad couldn't explain her instinct to protect Maria. Perhaps it was the human's helplessness, or the way she stared around her with mild confusion. Perhaps it was the way that Glad's right eye saw her as a human, but her left eye saw her as a brilliant angelic figure. After spending so long suffering illness, her vision slowly being replaced by strange lights, and the crippling headaches that came and went-it was refreshing to look after someone else.  
Maria changed into the borrowed clothes. They were a little short-too much ankle and wrist showed-but they fit far better than the hospital gown. Glad checked the oncoming red enemy and seized a moment to brush Maria's hair.  
"We need to move toward Shadow," Maria murmured.  
Glad nodded. The red person was moving purposefully in their direction now. This Shadow, on the other hand, was wandering here and there, as if he couldn't figure out where they were.  
Glad took Maria's hand and slipped out the back door. They had a small yard ringed with fruit trees. Glad opened the back gate and ushered Maria through. The red enemy had almost reached the shack's front door.  
The human and echidna darted along a narrow path through a banana palm grove, arms raised to shield their faces from the broad leaves. Glad knew all the paths here. She guided Maria onto a side path overgrown with elephant's ear and followed it into the jungle. The glowing Shadow person drew nearer rapidly.  
So did the red figure. Glad looked over her shoulder. The red person turned out to be a white female bat in stylish clothes. She glided over the treetops in their wake, wings spread, cradling a large pistol with a silencer in both hands. Her eyes were fixed on Glad and Maria.  
Glad's heart twisted sickeningly. What could she do against a flying enemy? Maria was staggering and panting on the rough ground. Her bare feet were cut and bleeding. Glad cursed herself for not finding her any shoes.  
The bat dropped through the trees and landed in front of them in a graceful crouch. Glad leaped between the bat and Maria, arms spread, hair flying around her like a cape.  
They stood there like that, all three of them panting. The bat slowly straightened, still cradling the pistol, as if she knew her quarry was unarmed and needed no further threatening.  
"That was fun," said the bat. She blinked at Glad. "You're not on the roster. Who are you?"  
Glad had no idea what this meant. "N-nobody," she stammered.  
The bat waved the pistol at her. "I don't need to kill you, kid. I only want the human."  
"To kill her?" Glad blurted.  
The bat laughed, flashing pointed teeth. "I'm taking her alive. She's too valuable to kill. Step aside, now."  
Glad glanced into the jungle. The blue and red flame of Shadow was racing toward them.  
Maria seemed to see it, too. She laid a hand on Glad's shoulder. "It's all right. I'll come quietly. Move slowly." Her fingers tightened a little on the last word.  
Glad stepped aside with huge, exaggerated slowness, dragging her feet through the leaves. The bat waited, one toe tapping. She stared at Maria as if she was something rare, amazing, and worth a large sum. Her fingers drummed against the pistol's silencer.  
Footsteps crashed through the brush to their right. The bat whirled, lifting her gun.  
Glad grabbed Maria's arm to shield her again. A black figure leaped out of the trees and threw itself at Maria. The bat spun and fired, the gunshot astonishingly loud, even with a silencer. The black hedgehog coughed, then whispered, "Chaos control."  
Glad was yanked off her feet and thrown through space. Colors blurred around her. Pain stabbed through her chaos eye. She tried to scream, but no sound came out-  
Darkness. Echoes. Glad still held Maria's arm. Maria was bent over the black hedgehog, who was wilting to the floor. "Shadow! Blast that bat-Guardian, to me!"  
Footsteps clattered on stone. Voices rang out in a confusion of echoes. Glad fumbled backward until she touched a stone pillar, and hid behind it. Not only was it too dark to see, but her chaos eye showed nothing but blinding light. With one eye seeing light and the other seeing darkness, she was quite blind.  
Many voices exclaimed over Shadow's condition. Maria explained that he had been shot while trying to rescue them. Someone called Mecha was summoned to attend Shadow's wound. Judging by the voices, there were two males and two females in attendance. This Mecha arrived, but said nothing.  
Gladiolus crouched behind the pillar, blinking and blinking, willing her right eye to adjust. The darkness slowly gave way to dimness. She was in a huge stone hall of some sort. Glowing crystals burned at intervals around its edges, but they failed to light the whole place.  
The people in the middle of the room were an assortment of mobians-Maria was the only human, Glad was relieved to see. There were two hedgehogs, male and female. The male was probably Sonic. She'd seen him on TV and he looked just like him. There was a brown and white female badger. There was a terrifying robot with glowing red eyes-it must be what they called Mecha. And standing nearby, overseeing the mess, was a burly male echidna.  
As soon as she saw him, Glad knew that he was the boss. He had taken the same stance that the foreman used during major salvage operations-observant, in charge, letting people work, but making sure it was done right.  
He turned his head and met her eyes.  
Glad ducked behind the pillar a second too late. The echidna strode across the hall, stepped behind the pillar, and stared down at her. "Who are you?"  
Before she could say a word, he grabbed her arm and dragged her into the open, back toward the huddled group. He was amazingly strong. Glad struggled and tried to brace her feet, and he didn't even notice.  
"Is this the one who shot Shadow?" the echidna demanded, shoving Glad into view. His grip on her arm told her that he could break it if he wanted. She stood very still, gazing into the alarmed eyes of six different people.  
Fortunately, Maria came to the rescue. "No, that's Gladiolus. Put her down, Knuckles. She's already frightened to death."  
Knuckles released Glad's arm. Glad twisted away from him and stood with her shoulders hunched and arms folded, trying to protect herself from further attack. Everyone continued to stare at her as Maria explained how kind Glad had been, displaying her clothes as evidence.  
Shadow, the black hedgehog, lay on the floor with his eyes half-open. The robot knelt beside him with one hand resting on his chest, blood welling between his pointed fingers. The bat had shot him. Just ... shot him for no reason. A lump formed in her throat. She pressed one hand to her mouth to hide her trembling lower lip.  
She interrupted Maria's explanation by blurting, "Will he die?"  
Silence fell. Everyone looked at Shadow for a moment. Then Sonic said, "No, I think this time ol' Shads will pull through."  
Shadow's head rolled toward her, his black and red spines flattening under him. One outstretched hand beckoned. Glad inched toward him, still hugging herself, not wanting to go any nearer the looming malevolent figure of Knuckles.  
"You tried to protect Maria," Shadow whispered. "Thanks."  
Glad nodded. "I'm sorry," she whispered.  
Shadow smiled a little. "I'd take a hundred bullets for her."  
The robot lifted its red-stained hand. Although Shadow's fur remained soaked with blood, there was no wound anymore-only a fresh pink scab with a flattened bullet resting on top. The robot brushed it onto the floor with a plink. Glad blinked. Somehow, this terrifying, red-eyed robot with the pointed limbs had actually healed a gunshot wound.  
Shadow sat up, prodded, his chest, then nodded to the robot, which nodded back.  
"Shadow," said Knuckles.  
Everyone froze. Shadow didn't move, but his spines bristled. Knuckles's tone was sharp, angry. Glad flinched.  
"You know what you did?" Knuckles said, his voice dropping to an undertone. His eyes blazed.  
Shadow climbed to his feet and stood facing the red echidna. Glad backed away. Everyone else did, too. Apparently these two had a history and it wasn't good. But Shadow had just been shot while protecting Maria! Couldn't this Knuckles cut him some slack?  
Shadow said, also very softly, "I had to protect Maria."  
"At my expense?"  
The black hedgehog bared his teeth. "Your very proximity harms her, echidna. I am the only protector she needs."  
Knuckles's hands closed into fists. "So leaving me was the right thing to do?"  
Shadow didn't answer. His eyes darted sideways to Maria, who stood in silence, expressionless.  
Glad's chaos eye had been adjusting to the new auras around her. Everyone in the room burned with a rainbow of energy, which had blinded her at first. As she focused on Shadow and Knuckles, she could see the chaos power in them both. Knuckles was green straight through-green as fresh leaves, green as emeralds. Shadow still burned red and blue, but right now, a thread of distressed yellow wound through him. He must still be in pain, healing or no healing.  
Gladiolus stepped forward, placing herself between Shadow and Knuckles. "Please stop."  
Knuckles turned the full force of his glare upon her. "What do you think you're doing?"  
Glad mustered her courage and gazed into his eyes, which were dark with anger under heavy brows. Panic clawed at her throat, threatening to steal her voice. What was she doing? This was crazy. She forced herself to speak, although her voice trembled. "He's still hurt. Let him recover. Then you can pick on him."  
Knuckles bared his teeth in a brief snarl. Then he stepped sideways and pointed at Shadow. "You and I will discuss this later."  
Shadow turned his back on him and strode away through one of the many doorways.  
"And you," Knuckles said in an undertone, stepping toward Glad, "you're meddling. I should throw you off my island."  
Glad didn't understand the last part, but she did the first. He was so much bigger and stronger than her-he must be a terrible bully. Fully expecting a fist in the face, she said, "Do what you have to do."  
Knuckles clenched and unclenched a fist, as if he was considering it. Then he stepped around her and walked away.  
Glad stood there, heart pounding, drawing breath after breath. She had a sudden, powerful wish for her own bed in her own house, where her mother and aunt would fuss over her and keep away bullies and anybody who would ask questions about her eye.  
"Excuse me," said a female voice.  
Glad turned to see the pink hedgehog standing there, a look of concern on her face.  
"I'm Amy Rose," she said, "and you'd better come with me."

* * *

Knuckles went downstairs to the second floor and vented his feelings by punching several holes in a stone wall. Stupid Shadow. Stupid new girl who didn't know anything. Stupid NME coming in their stupid ship. His fist cracked the wall in a new spot. Stupid monster in the ocean that kept whispering to him. Stupid everything!  
He reduced an entire wall to gravel, then leaned against the doorway of the room, panting. Nobody had followed him. The second floor was quiet. It was a long, curving hallway flanked by empty rooms, probably for supplies. Nobody would want to use this room, though.  
 _They promised me justice_ , the monster's voice whispered.  
Knuckles grabbed his head. "Shut up!"  
 _Only blood will satisfy me._  
He flicked on his headset. "Ramussan, can you do something about the voices?"  
"Voices, sir?" the AI replied.  
"Yeah. That water monster in the ocean keeps saying stuff. It's driving me nuts."  
Ramussan was quiet for a long second. "I lack the capabilities to interfere with telepathy, sir."  
Knuckles growled and kicked the doorway. Then he set off down the hall, toward the stairs.  
Tails had found his way to the bottom floor of the island. Knuckles descended three flights and came to a dark, huge space with the wind blowing through it. "Ram, I'm trying to reach Tails. Where am I?"  
"You're in the hanger, sir. To reach Tails, follow the interior wall until you reach a hallway."  
Knuckles followed these instructions. As long as he was talking and moving, he couldn't hear the monster's whispers. Tails was the only person not mixed up in this dismal business, and Knuckles wanted to check on him, anyway.  
Ramussan guided him through a winding series of passages and through a vault door into Tails's 'tall cave'. It smelled of silicon and metal, and was inexplicably warmer than the other rooms. Tails sat on the floor with several sheets of paper spread around him in the light of a glowing crystal. He was drawing furiously.  
"Hey, Tails," Knuckles said, walking up. "What is all this?"  
"Schematics," the fox said, glancing at him. He flung his arms wide. "Welcome to the ARK cannon! Did you know that the floor is a giant focusing lens?"  
Knuckles shifted his feet uneasily. The floor was smooth, dusty glass. "Uh, wow."  
"Yeah, it's incredible! The ARK cannon can produce a plasma bolt three times hotter than the surface of the sun!"  
"Like right now?"  
Tails's face fell. "Not yet. It's broken." He brightened. "But I'm going to fix it! I'm drawing up schematics right now. The broken parts shouldn't be hard to find. I'm always seeing most of it on the salvage market."  
Knuckles's heart cheered a little. "Can you have it fixed in five days?"  
Tails studied the papers scattered around him, rubbing his chin. "Maybe. If you can talk Ramussan into lending me his repair robots."  
Ramussan, who always listened to everything spoken in the vicinity of the headsets, said, "But I need them!"  
Knuckles motioned for Tails to put on his headset. Tails did. "Please, Ram?"  
"I'm using them to repair the breakers on the fourth floor!" Ram sounded petulant. "If you want your precious cannon to fire without blowing out the power grid, I have to have all the fuses repaired."  
"Can I have five robots?" Tails said.  
"Two," Ramussan snapped.  
"Three?"  
"Done. Do you want them to bring parts?"  
"Yeah." Tails reeled off a list of parts and wire that staggered Knuckles. "And a sandwich," he added. "I skipped breakfast."  
"I'll get you one," Knuckles said. "Hey, did you know the fifth floor is a hanger? Like, for aircraft?"  
"I wondered what all the space was for," Tails said pensively. "If we could get the doors open, I could bring in the biplane. Ram, is that possible?"  
"The outer doors have been sealed underwater for three hundred years," Ram replied. "Maybe if you took a pick axe to them."  
Knuckles walked out into the empty, windy space. "There's an awful lot of air in here. It feels like there's a door open someplace."  
Ramussan said slowly, "There must be an opening, sir. Ghost, might I call upon you to investigate?"  
Metal Sonic's flat text-to-speech voice sounded over the headset. It was the only way he could speak to the group-he still had no external voice. "Affirmative, Ramussan. Moving to investigate."  
Knuckles climbed the stairs back to the first floor. As he went, he said, "Shadow and Maria picked up a stowaway, Ram. Do you think she's a spy?" He really would throw her off the island if she was an NME agent.  
"She's an unfortunate bystander," Ramussan said dismissively. "I've been listening to her conversation with the Manager. She's lived her whole life on Bygone Island. Collects scrap for a living. Has two years to live. Boring."  
"Two years to live?" Knuckles halted on a staircase, one hand to his earpiece. "What's wrong with her?"  
"A rare malady known as chaos eye. Apparently she mishandled chaos crystal as a child."  
That explained the eyepatch. Knuckles resumed climbing, pondering this. "Why did she stick up for Shadow like that?"  
"From what I'm hearing, Gladiolus is loyal to Maria. When Shadow took a bullet saving her, Gladiolus became loyal to him by extension. I believe she is completely unaware of any past history regarding them."  
Knuckles heaved a sigh. "So throwing her off the island would be a bad move."  
"Such a thing would likely anger Maria, sir. You could ask Shadow to return her home with chaos control."  
"I'm not messing with Shadow right now," Knuckles growled. "Why does life have to be so everlastingly complicated?"  
"Philosophers have been busy with that question for millennia, sir."


	3. Chapter 3

Many miles away, at the other end of the ocean, floated an airship like a vast airborne city: The Fellstorm. It trailed a cloud of black smoke behind it from many exhaust vents. Its belly held an entire robotics factory which produced dozens of fully-built battle robots every day. The rest of the ship was armor for robots, storage bays for robots, and weapons for robots. The only living people aboard occupied the bridge on the highest level.  
Tasha Hunter, a blue tigress, and CEO of National Machine Enterprises, stood gazing out the bridge windows at the endless ocean ahead. Five days of travel, and the chaos girl would be in her hands. Her claws flexed. So much power.  
Nearby, a red wolf in a black jumpsuit worked at the computers. He was Regis Howell, chief engineer and war profiteer. He followed Hunter's gaze out the window and grinned, baring his teeth. He shared her goal of ultimate power, but channeled through robotics.  
The third member of the group, Hylee Snicker, a hyena, sat before a computer and scanned through endless reports from the Fellstorm's factory.  
All three of them shared a web of chaos power. Invisible strands of magic stretched between them, joining them together into something greater than any of them alone. Cords stretched into the distance, connecting Rouge the Bat to their party. They had felt her nearness to the chaos girl, and felt the chaos girl's escape, withdrawing the power to the fastness of the floating island. Rouge's frustration spread to all of them.  
"We must find an unexpected way to strike at them," Hunter whispered, the tip of her striped tail twitching. She snapped her fingers. "Snicker, what about Eggman?"  
"He's cut communications," the hyena replied. "He's running scared."  
"I have an idea, said Regis Howell. The wolf lifted one finger and slowly pointed eastward.  
The three directed their awareness outward, following Howell's guiding focus. In his careful, precise way, he led their web across the vast ocean ahead of them, then down, into the dark water.  
An alien mind shifted its attention to them. Its sullen anger flared into rage as they touched it. WHO ARE YOU?  
Tasha Hunter raised one hand in a caressing motion, even though the monster was a thousand miles away. "We are your new best friends." To her companions on the ship, she said softly, "What is this thing?"  
"I've been trying to figure that out," said Howell quietly. "It appeared when they launched the island."  
Tasha addressed the monster. "How might we help you?"  
"I desire vengeance." The monster's consciousness shook their power web, jarring their connections. It's very voice was almost too powerful to bear.  
Tasha staggered under its weight, gripping the dashboard for support. Yet she laughed. This monster was just as powerful as the chaos girl, and much more accessible. "Vengeance for what, against what?"  
"I have been betrayed and wrongfully imprisoned," the monster snarled. "I desire vengeance on those whom I foolishly trusted."  
Tasha shot an excited look at Snicker. "Find out who betrayed him."  
The hyena nodded and typed furiously.  
"What is your name, great one?" Tasha said. Her voice sounded shrill and tiny in her ears, like a mouse squeaking between the paws of a lion.  
The monster rumbled, "I am Perfect Chaos."

* * *

"So that's what's been going on," Amy Rose said.  
The pink hedgehog and red echidna girl sat on marble benches around a stone table in Angel Island's galley. Amy had made coffee, which Gladiolus sipped dubiously. She'd never been allowed to drink it before. She held the mug in both hands, considering the long, crazy story Amy had just told her.  
"So ... I did wrong," Gladiolus said slowly. "I didn't know that Shadow tried to kill Knuckles."  
Amy nodded.  
"But why?" Glad set her cup down. "Why would Shadow do that? Wouldn't he be grateful to anyone who helped Maria? He rescued me from that bat, too."  
Amy sat with her chin in one hand, gazing at her naive companion. "I think he rescued you by accident."  
Glad bristled. "Accident?"  
Amy raised a hand. "Calm down. Chaos control works on contact. When you teleport, whatever you're touching goes, too. Some of us had an ... accident ... lately." Her eyes unfocused, looking inward into memory.  
Glad didn't ask. It was troubling to think of those confused moments when the bat had been going to take Maria, and Shadow had come running ... If Glad had not been holding Maria's arm, would Shadow have indeed left Glad there with the murderous bat? It hurt her to think of it. Glad's entire world had always been laid out in simple black and white. Friends were good, strangers and enemies were bad. But this friend was bad, and it threw off her reckoning. She might as well have been told that water flows up, then been given proof.  
A red tear trickled from under her eyepatch. Glad wiped it away. "I want to go home."  
Amy straightened a little. "Logistics are a little tricky right now. We're a mile off the ground."  
"Wait," Glad said. "You mean this is Angel Island? The one that flew into the air this morning?"  
Amy nodded. "Where did you think you were?"  
"I didn't know!" Glad gazed around the galley with new appreciation. "I thought we were in some palace somewhere. I did think it strange that there's no electricity." She glanced at the fireplace, where Amy had heated water in a kettle over a small fire to pour into a camp coffee pot.  
"There's power," Amy hedged. "Just not in standard voltage."  
At this point Sonic walked in, nose uplifted. "I smell ... I smell the most beautiful scent in the world. Coffee!" He dashed for the pot. "Amy, you made coffee? In this weird pot?" He spun around, hands clasped in a begging attitude. "Oh, please, Aimes, say there's another mug around here."  
"In the pantry, wise guy," Amy said, unaffected by his exuberance.  
Sonic whisked into the enormous pantry and returned with a mug in hand. Gladiolus watched him as he poured himself a cup. Gosh, it was really Sonic the Hedgehog. And he acted just like he did on TV. What should she say that wouldn't sound totally stupid? What did you say to a celebrity who you felt like you knew but didn't?  
Sonic added far too much sugar to his coffee, complained about the lack of dairy anything, and sat down at the table. His seating was strategic, Glad noticed. He sat a few feet away from Amy, so it didn't look like their relationship was anything but friendship. He sat where he could face the newcomer. Yes, this was the guy who fought robots for a living-caution was so deeply engrained in him, he was unaware of it.  
"Hey there," Sonic said, extending a hand over the table. "I'm Sonic."  
"Gladiolus Lark," she replied, shaking his hand. "I'm ... wow, I can't believe I'm shaking your hand."  
Sonic laughed. "I know, right? They catch me on camera a few times and suddenly, ooo, I'm famous."  
Gladiolus opened her mouth to reply and found that she had no idea what to say. She sipped coffee to conceal her embarrassment.  
If Sonic noticed this, he made no sign. "I need caffeine, man. I've got to go patrol the island, make sure NME hasn't sent drones on ahead or anything. Gotta stay in shape, you know?"  
"Be careful out there," Amy said, giving him an anxious look. "You could fall off the island now."  
"Yeah, and the water monster might get you," Glad said.  
There was a small silence. Amy and Sonic blinked at Glad.  
"What water monster?" Sonic said.  
"The one that wants to get Maria." Glad looked back and forth between their unbelieving faces. "I thought you knew about it. Maria talked about it like it was common knowledge."  
"What's it look like?" Sonic said.  
Rats, what had she truly seen? An extra-strong wave and some weird splashing? "I didn't really see it," Gladiolus said slowly, willing them to understand. "But this wave came up the beach to our feet, and I felt this ... this mind looking at us. Maria felt it, too. I had to help her run away."  
Amy and Sonic exchanged a bewildered look. "I think," Amy said, "we need to ask Knuckles a few questions."  
"About what?"  
Knuckles stepped into the galley and walked to the pantry. He stared at Gladiolus as he passed with a direct, knowing look. Glad shrank together warily. She had crossed him the moment they met, and she hadn't the faintest idea how to put it right. Heck, she didn't know if she even wanted to try. If they would just let her go home ...  
"Glad, here, was talking about a water monster," Sonic said. "She thinks it wants to get Maria."  
Knuckles emerged from the pantry with the fixings for tuna sandwiches. He set everything carefully on the stone countertop without answering.  
"Knuckles?" Amy said softly. "What's wrong?"  
The burly red echidna tore open a can of tuna. "Everything."  
Sonic exchanged a quick, worried look with Amy and Gladiolus. "Maybe you should let us know what we're up against."  
Knuckles savagely mixed mayonnaise into the tuna, like he was working up the nerve to tell the story. "Okay, when we chaos controlled, we went way underground into some secret lab. Shadow and Maria used to live there."  
"They lived in a lab?" Amy said blankly. "So they're ... experiments?"  
Knuckles's hands stilled. He braced himself on the counter and bowed his head for a moment.  
For some reason, the sight of this towering, powerful echidna expressing such open anguish hurt Gladiolus. He should be proud, angry, fearless-not hanging his head, looking suddenly overwhelmed by whatever he had experienced. She had to look away.  
"Experiments is too mild a word," Knuckles said in a low voice. "Even Metal Sonic was afraid to go into those places. Not only was it ... creepy ... but the whole place had been wrecked. Flooded. Then Shadow just had to go and poke the monster in the basement with chaos power. He woke it up. Then Maria wanted to talk to it. So we went downstairs."  
Gladiolus began to see how Shadow must have abandoned Knuckles to be killed by the monster. No wonder Knuckles was so furious with him.  
Knuckles drew a deep breath and went on mixing the tuna. He didn't say anything else.  
Sonic said, "But didn't you guys help move the island? Ramussan wouldn't shut up about it."  
Knuckles nodded. "We did. The monster was underneath."  
Amy, Sonic, and Glad exchanged a horrified look.  
"That earthquake," Sonic murmured. "When the island rocked a little bit. Tails told me over the radio when it happened. Was that the monster?"  
Knuckles nodded. "He shook us up pretty bad. That was when Shadow poked him."  
He wasn't going to talk about the being left for dead part, Gladiolus could see. Curiosity nagged at her, but she was afraid to ask. What if he blew his top again?  
Fortunately, Amy was curious, too. "How did you escape?"  
Knuckles shrugged. "Metal Sonic found a way out."  
"Did Shadow leave him, too?" Sonic said.  
Knuckles shot him a quick, sideways glance, as if checking to see if Sonic was paying attention. Deliberately, he spread tuna on slices of bread. "No."  
Gladiolus blurted, "So the robot went back for you?"  
Knuckles didn't look at her, just kept on making sandwiches. "Yep."  
"Dude," Sonic muttered, "I am going to freaking _kill_ Shadow."  
Knuckles smiled with one half of his face-a lopsided, pained smile. He set the sandwiches on a plate. "These are for Tails. Sonic, want to do the honors?"  
"If you make me one for the road," Sonic said.  
Knuckles did. Sonic departed at a jog, which was faster than Gladiolus could sprint.  
Knuckles came to sit at the table, taking Sonic's spot. Gladiolus stared into her almost-empty coffee cup rather than look at him. _He must hate me. If I were him, I would hate me_. _Shadow tried to kill him. Then when he tries to confront him about it, stupid echidna girl gets in the way._ She wanted to shrink into a puddle and ooze out the door.  
Amy patted Knuckles's shoulder. "We're glad you're all right."  
Knuckles spread his big hands, as if about to speak, then folded them in front of him. "It's over with. I lived. The water monster is out. It wants justice for past wrongs. Darned if I know what that is. Amy, think you could dig into history and find out about it?"  
"Sure," Any said, her gaze sharpening. "What time period?"  
"The Calamity."  
There was a stunned silence. Amy slowly winced, as if Knuckles had said a terribly bad word.  
Gladiolus's whole body went cold. Her fingers tightened on her coffee mug. "This monster caused the Calamity?"  
When she looked up, Knuckles was gazing at her. His eyes were dark blue, she noticed.  
"That's the thing," he said. "I don't know. I never studied much history."  
His tone was serious, but conversational. Maybe he didn't hate her particularly. Maybe he only acted standoffish because she was a stranger. Glad began to relax, just a tiny bit.  
Amy got up. "I'll get my laptop. The sooner we can figure this out, the better." She slid off the bench and trotted away.  
Glad and Knuckles sat at the table in silence. Glad had no idea what to say to him. He was the most imposing person she had ever met, and his very nearness sent prickles of anxiety through her.  
Knuckles, on the other hand, didn't seem to have this problem. He smiled a little and said, "So, still think I should have left Shadow alone?"  
Glad gulped the last of her coffee to give herself time to think. Then she met his gaze. "You two definitely need to work it out. But maybe, right after he had been shot wasn't the best time."  
He shrugged. "Maybe. I did wait until Mecha healed him."  
Glad fiddled with her empty cup. "Why don't you talk to Maria about him?"  
Knuckles snorted. "She'll take his side. They grew up together."  
But back on the beach ... Glad remembered Maria crying, alone. "I found Maria on the beach this morning. She was crying. She said that she had to punish someone for leaving someone else to die."  
Knuckles raised one eyebrow. "Oh really? And she was alone?"  
Glad nodded. "I had to help her."  
"Well," Knuckles said. "That's promising. Maybe Maria didn't agree with her spiteful brother, after all."  
Glad added, "Then that water monster came up the beach in a wave and touched our feet. I felt it."  
Knuckles sat up straight, hands closing into fists. "It touched you both?"  
Glad nodded, hunching her shoulders a little.  
"Then you're in danger, too."  
"But ... why?" Glad said, forcing the words out. Any time he moved quickly, she expected an attack.  
Knuckles looked at her, frowned and shook his head a little. "You're an echidna. So were the ancients who made it mad. That monster has it out for me in particular. If it knows you exist, it'll hunt you, too."  
Glad stiffened. "What about my mother and aunt? We live in Pilings, right by the sea."  
Knuckles rubbed his chin as he considered this. "Do they swim in the ocean very often?"  
Glad shook her head. "No, we work salvage. We dig in the cliffs and things along the coast, but we don't go in the water."  
"They'll be okay for now," Knuckles said. "The monster is hanging around underneath Angel Island, hoping to catch us. I don't think it'll bother Bygone. At least ... not yet." He frowned and seemed to retreat into his thoughts.  
Glad sat there and wondered what else to say. She knew nothing about Knuckles, other than he was one of Sonic's friends. When did one of Sonic's friends become so serious and dark?  
"Is ... is there somewhere I can stay?" Gladiolus asked. "Since I might be here a few days."  
"Oh, sure." Knuckles looked vaguely surprised at the question. "I'll show you the crew bunker. You'll probably want to stay in the girl's room."  
He led her out of the galley, down a high-ceilinged corridor, and back to the main hall. As they walked, Glad blinked behind her eyepatch. There was so much ambient chaos power, she seemed to move through a haze of colors. The stone walls foiled her chaos eye, but she caught brighter auras from certain doorways. There was a broad staircase curving downward that had a tremendous amount of green power hanging about it. It matched the power radiating from Knuckles.  
"What's down there?" she asked.  
Knuckles glanced over his shoulder. "Dangerous power stuff for the island. Stay away."  
"Oh." Glad hugged herself as they walked by. But that green glow was hard to ignore, especially when it surrounded Knuckles, himself. Was he connected to the island's power source, somehow?  
He turned right and led her down another passage to a series of doors. He knocked on one. The brown badger opened it.  
"Hey, Sticks," Knuckles said. "This is Gladiolus. She needs a place to stay until we figure out how to get her home."  
Sticks glanced at Glad and opened the door wider. "Come in. Unless you're an alien robot. Is the eyepatch for your robotic eye?"  
Gladiolus opened her mouth, but no words came out.  
"She has a disease, Sticks," Knuckles said. "Be polite." In an undertone, he added to Gladiolus, "Paranoia."  
"I am not!" Sticks exclaimed. "I see the world for how it truly is!"  
Oh, just like her mother. That wasn't so bad, then. Gladiolus smiled and stepped inside. "Don't worry. I'm not contagious."  
"Good," said another voice. "Maybe we can look into it now."  
Maria sat on a bunk with an open book in her lap, smiling at Glad in recognition.  
Glad felt at home immediately.


	4. Chapter 4

Sonic ran through Angel Island's jungle, careening from tree to tree, leaping off boulders, catching hold of branches and vines to leap tangled roots and brush. It was great fun and a good workout.  
But Sonic wasn't just playing-he was working his way up the eastern mountainside. There was a fine little plateau up there where he could survey most of the island.  
The trees thinned. Sonic had to scramble up the final slope without their help. It was almost a cliff, but not quite. He clawed his way up the final five feet and rolled onto flat ground with a grunt of satisfaction. He lay there panting for a moment, until he noticed a huge red millipede making its sinuous way along the ground beside his head. He leaped to his feet with a yell.  
"What's wrong?" Knuckles said in his headset.  
"Oh, nothing," Sonic said. "Just a millipede the size of an anaconda."  
"It's the jungle," Knuckles said, his grin evident in his voice. "Get used to it."  
"Yeah, yeah." Sonic zipped a safe distance from the millipede and gazed across the island.  
At his back was the island's central mountain. Before him stretched the island in a vast curve from northeast to southeast. It was all rolling hills blanketed in green jungle, dappled with drifting cloud shadows. The clouds themselves were only a few hundred feet above his head, colossal cumulus that looked as solid as cotton wool. Sonic tried to hit one with a rock, but the clouds were further away than they looked.  
"See anything?" Knuckles asked. He was panting, climbing the opposite side of the same mountain.  
"Not at the moment." Sonic pulled a small scope off a pouch at his belt and scanned the landscape. He made himself move slowly, observing carefully.  
"Okay," he said into the headset. "Looking northeast. I see trees. And ... trees. And ... more trees. And ... you guessed it. Trees."  
"No birds?" Knuckles said sarcastically.  
"Oh yeah, birds," Sonic said. "Lots of those. Just flying all over. Knux, what we have here is a bird sanctuary."  
"Yay," Knuckles said. "I'll apply for the sanctuary paperwork and maybe get some tax breaks."  
"If NME doesn't bomb us into itsy bitsy splinters."  
"You had to bring that up."  
Sonic continued scanning. "No robots yet. That's a good sign."  
"I keep expecting something to show up," Knuckles said. "We know they're coming. Eggman always sends scouts before an attack, so you'd think these jokers would, too."  
"Yeah, who knows," Sonic said. "Maybe they have robots with cloaking devices. Or maybe they're too tiny to see. Or maybe ... what in the name of Chaos is that?"  
"What?"  
Sonic didn't answer. A creature like a huge bat was drifting along over the treetops to the southeast, banking to avoid the tallest trees.  
"We got a bat," Sonic said in a low voice.  
"Animal or Mobian?" Knuckles's voice was tense.  
"It's wearing jeans. I'd say Mobian."  
"Think it's the bat who shot Shadow?"  
"Let's see," said Sonic, pretending to think. "We're a mile in the air. That bat had to work really hard to get here. It's sneaking around the edges of the island instead of coming here to talk. Yeah. I'd say we have our NME scout."  
Knuckles muttered something about sniper rifles.  
"Well, we don't have one," Sonic replied, "so don't get bent out of shape. I can go take care of this bat."  
"She has a gun, Sonic," Knuckles said.  
"So?" Sonic replied. "I'm faster than bullets."  
"Not at close range, you're not."  
"I won't let her get close. Simple." Sonic curled into a ball and rolled down the almost-cliffside.

* * *

Rouge the Bat landed in a tree and gazed at the mountain in the island's center. That had to be where everyone was.  
Aside from the chattering of the birds, it was peaceful and quiet. Wind gusted through the forest from time to time, making the trees roar like the sea. That wind had given her trouble on her long flight up-it kept trying to blow her under the island into the barnacle-encrusted cliffs there.  
She closed her eyes and opened her mind. Her connection to Tasha Hunter's power web was still there, strong as ever. Through it she sensed the impatience of her colleagues, and their hope that she would accomplish her mission. Six deaths, and NME could take the chaos girl and the island with no resistance. So far, Rouge had only managed to shoot one of her six targets, and he escaped afterward. She couldn't consider him dead until she had examined the corpse herself.  
Rouge was indifferent to killing people. The trick was not to think of them as people-just things that you wanted to stop moving. Now that she had joined the chaos web of Tasha's, she felt a connection with three other beings at all times. They were the only people who were really alive. Everyone else in the world were only a means to an end: to build Rouge the largest collection of precious stones in the world, chaos crystal included.  
Sometimes she did think about the people she had killed. Sometimes she did feel remorseful. Then she went into her private chambers and opened the padded chest where her jewel collection resided in individual boxes. The overwhelming sparkle usually served to numb her withering conscience.  
For now, she had another job to do. It was the thrill of the hunt, with lots of reward at the end.  
Rouge checked her silencer. It was a steel beauty, built to last. She could even fire at night and the silencer hid the muzzle flash. Excellent for terminating targets. The magazine was only missing one bullet, so she returned it to its custom holster.  
Next she checked her backpack. It was a sleek, aerodynamic nylon bag, custom made for her. It held her surveying instruments and satellite uplink. All intact.  
She spread her wings and fluttered to the next tree, then the next. While the canopy had its dangers, it was nothing compared to the critter-infested forest floor.  
She had progressed nearly half a mile this way, and was resting on a branch beside a stream, when something sped by on the ground below. She almost didn't see it, anymore than she might miss an insect winging through her range of vision. But this was Mobian-sized, and way too fast.  
Sonic. Rouge pulled her gun from its holster and steadied it on a nearby limb. Her eyes widened, her broad, pointed ears twitching to pick up the slightest sound. Let the hunt begin.  
Sonic's footsteps faded into the distance, but he wasn't moving in a straight line. Rouge tracked him by sound, stealthily gliding from tree to tree. He was running back and forth in a search pattern, stopping randomly to listen, as she was doing.  
Was it possible that he knew she was here? Rouge had to assume that it was. If he wasn't searching for her, then he was hunting someone else. A third player in this game was unwelcome and also unlikely. If Sonic was on this part of the island, then he must know there was an intruder.  
His footsteps came toward her. He would pass beneath her tree. She aimed her pistol in the direction he would come. Any second now and he would flash through her sights. Her finger curled around the trigger. His footsteps grew louder. She exhaled, bracing for the pistol's kick-  
Something moved in the tree behind her.  
Rouge whipped her head around to look. There was nothing there, but it cost her the fraction of a second needed to make the shot. Sonic whizzed beneath her tree and was gone.  
Rouge scanned up and down her tree. The sound had been the rasp of a hand on bark. Unless it had been a squirrel, or a monkey, or some other animal, there was a third player in this game.  
She beat her wings and flew to another tree, keeping an eye over her shoulder. There! Something had moved in the thin branches in the tree's top. There was too much foliage to identify it, but she hadn't been alone.  
Rouge landed in the next tree, crouched against two branches, and propped her arms on her knees, ready to fire.  
Nothing happened.  
She sat there, sweat trickling down her back, tense and listening. No more movement. No sound. Sonic's noise faded into the distance and vanished. Maybe he had given up his search.  
There was no one in the jungle but Rouge and her unseen enemy.

* * *

Sonic ran flat out, beating it back to the underground palace as quick as he could. In his headset, Metal Sonic said, "She had a perfect shot. Had I not distracted her, you would be dead. Retreat to safety."  
"You're the Ghost," Sonic said, and ran. Cold sweat prickled on his neck. He had never even laid eyes on the bat. When had Metal Sonic disturbed her? When had she had a perfect shot? Sonic was happy to go to ground, where it was safe.  
Knuckles, who he knew had been listening, said nothing for a long time. Finally Tails said, very quietly, "Sonic, are you okay?"  
"I'm great," Sonic replied, leaping a boulder.  
Amy, who Sonic hadn't realized was listening said, "That was too close."  
Knuckles still hadn't said anything. Sonic finally said, "Knux?"  
"Just get inside, Sonic." Knuckles's voice was oddly muffled.  
Nobody said anything else. The awfulness of the situation had been driven home, taking away all humor. If Metal Sonic hadn't been doing his job, ghosting around the island as its spy, they would be planning Sonic's funeral right now. Sonic alternated between jubilation at his escape, and sick terror at what might have happened.  
He'd never even seen the bat. He had no idea at what spot his life might have ended. She must have been up in a tree the whole time.  
He arrived at the western doors, which had once been ancient stone gates. Eggman had blown them up and replaced them with a simple sliding metal door on a rail. Sonic heaved it open, slipped inside, and dragged it shut. The crystal lights in the walls comforted him immediately. It was like coming home to peace and safety.  
Maria awaited him at the top of the stairs.  
Sonic jumped when he saw her. After his scare, he'd forgotten all about her, silly as it seemed. She stood there, hands at her sides, golden hair combed back, looking freshly bathed and clean.  
"Oh," he said, halting. "Uh. Hi, Maria."  
"Are you hurt?" she said anxiously, coming up to him and putting a hand on his shoulder.  
"No. Why-how did you know?" She wasn't wearing a headset. Maybe one of the others had mentioned it.  
Maria gazed into the distance for a long moment. Sonic was disconcerted to realize that she was facing the approximate direction of the intruding bat. "I've known she was here since she set foot on Angel Island. I know you are the Warrior, but ..." Her eyes filled with tears. "Please don't let them kill you, Sonic."  
This upset Sonic even more, that she was frightened enough to cry over him. He patted her hand on his shoulder. "Hey, it's cool. I had backup, you know?"  
Maria wiped her eyes. "Yes. I'm very thankful. I don't want to have to avenge anyone."  
They walked down the stairs together, avoiding the trapped steps halfway down. "I'm afraid to ask how you might avenge anyone," Sonic said with a half-grin.  
Maria smiled a little. "I am capable of truly awful things, Sonic."  
They avoided a trapdoor. Maria moved with grace, a far cry from the weak, stumbling creature she had been two days ago.  
"Hey," Sonic said, "how're you so strong already? You should still be in physical therapy, and look at you."  
Her smile widened. "Shadow and Knuckles helped strengthen me."  
She didn't explain any further. Sonic guessed it had something to do with chaos power and didn't ask.  
As they reached the foot of the stairs, Amy came running across the hall and flung her arms around him. "Sonic! You're okay!"  
"Sure I am," Sonic replied, awkwardly hugging her with one arm.  
"You only just recovered from your burn," Amy said, pulling away to look at him. "I can't face seeing you hurt again."  
Sonic grinned. "I'm fine, Aimes, really. You know I'm faster than bullets."

* * *

Gladiolus hung about at the far end of the hall, feeling lonely and excluded. Everyone wore headsets except her. They communicated all the time, and she wasn't privy to any of it. But she gathered that the red-glowing bat who had shot Shadow had nearly killed Sonic. Everyone was shaken and frightened.  
 _I can help_ , she realized with surprise. Distance made no difference to her chaos eye. She could go outside and see exactly where the bat was at all times.  
She crossed the hall and climbed the broad staircase that Sonic and Maria had come down. The only one who noticed her go was Maria, who gave her an anxious look.  
Glad reached the upper hall, slid open the outer door, and stepped out into the hot, humid afternoon. This door opened into the bottom of a dry, shallow ravine that was filled with broken stone. Probably the remains of the old doors. Cautiously she looked around with her chaos eye.  
Knuckles was up on the edge of the ravine.  
She never would have seen him with normal vision. He sat in a cleft between two rocks, hidden from the door, but his green aura gave him away. He didn't appear to have noticed her.  
Glad gazed around with her chaos eye. Far in the distance, she caught a red speck amid the haze of chaos energy that hung over the island. The bat must be miles away. Glad stepped toward Knuckles to tell him, then stopped again.  
Now that she could see him, she realized why he was hidden like that. He sat with his forehead resting against his knees, and his arms wrapped around them, in an attitude of deep misery. His headset sat a few feet away, switched off. His dreadlocks hid his face, so she couldn't read his expression. But this was a side of the burly echidna she hadn't wanted to see. It felt too personal, like she was invading his privacy. She started to creep back toward the palace door.  
"Hey."  
His voice stopped her. Glad flinched and slowly turned.  
Knuckles gazed at her, his eyes slightly bloodshot. "What do you want?"  
"I, um ..." What had she been doing? Her thoughts scattered like leaves in a whirlwind. She ran after them inside her head. "I was trying to see the bat. She's out there." Glad pointed southwestward. "Probably about two miles away."  
Knuckles glanced over his shoulder in the direction she was pointing, but all he could see were the trees along the ravine. "You can see where she is?"  
Glad nodded. "With my chaos eye. She's this dark red color."  
Knuckles smirked. "Do I have a color?"  
"Yes. You glow green."  
"Huh." He shook his head. "That doesn't surprise me." Before Glad could resume creeping back inside, he climbed out of the rocks and sat on a ledge at the top of the ravine. "Sit up here and tell me exactly where the bat is."  
Hesitantly, Glad climbed the side of the ravine, which was only six feet high and made of roughly split rock with lots of handholds. Her long dreadlocks kept getting in the way, and she arrived at the top with leaves stuck in them. She sat a few feet away from Knuckles, inspecting the ground for insects or snakes.  
"Can you see her?" Knuckles asked, watching Glad.  
Glad closed her good eye and looked through the bad one. "Yes. She's just a dot from here, but it looks like she's sitting still."  
"Mecha's out there, too. Can you see him?"  
Glad gazed that direction for a while. "The haze makes it hard to see. Sometimes I think I can see something moving, but it blends in. Is that why he's called the Ghost?"  
"It's a title," Knuckles said. "Like how I'm the Guardian."  
"Oh," said Glad. "And Sonic's the warrior?"  
"Right."  
They sat in silence for a moment. Glad turned her head, scanning the ambient chaos noise, but there were no other bright spots in the haze.  
Without looking at him, Glad said, "How come you're out here instead of inside?"  
Knuckles pasted a lopsided, pained smile on his face. "Oh, you know. I sent my friend to his potential death. I had to deal with that."  
That stopped the conversation dead. Glad swallowed and looked everywhere but him.  
"Where are you from?" Knuckles asked after a while. "I've never seen you around Bygone Village."  
"I live in Pilings, on the east side," Glad said. When he made a face, she added, "It's not as bad as it sounds. I know a lot of salvage people live there, but they're good people."  
Knuckles nodded. "Ever have trouble with Eggman?"  
She shook her head. "He doesn't bother with us. I know the salvage rats sell direct to him sometimes, though. He tries to pay bottom dollar for everything, the tightwad."  
Knuckles grinned for the first time. "Everybody buys salvage. It's where the good stuff comes from."  
They talked about the various machines and types of metals recovered from the buried city beneath Bygone. Each island in the archipelago had been a city or industrial complex of some kind. Each one yielded different sorts of salvage and technology. Glad relaxed a little. Knuckles seemed quite friendly, and didn't mention that she had caught him at a low point.  
A bird trilled in the tree above them. Glad and Knuckles looked up.  
"What kind of bird is that?" asked Glad.  
Knuckles rose to his feet, peering into the branches. "That's not a bird." A smile spread across his face. "Hey, little fella. How'd you get here?"  
A strange creature dropped out of the tree and landed in Knuckles's cupped hands. Glad cringed away from it. It had a light blue onion-shaped head, one red eye, and three tentacle-things. It floated an inch off Knuckles's hands, blinking up at them. It trilled again.  
"It's a wisp," Knuckles said. "I think this is the one that saved me. It looks just like it."  
Glad crept a little closer and peered at it. "How did a tiny thing like that save you?"  
"Oh, they do this thing," Knuckles said. He seemed to have forgotten his determination not to talk about his brush with death. "They merge into you and turn you into pure power. I got away from the water monster that way. I was like a lightning bolt or something."  
Glad thought he was joking. But when she scanned his face, there was no trace of humor in his face-only pleasure at the wisp's presence. He looked like he'd found a stray kitten.  
"Are your friends here?" Knuckles asked it.  
The wisp made a series of whistling sounds and pointed one tentacle in the direction of Bygone Island.  
"I'll have to invite them here," Knuckles said. "As soon as I figure out how to get off Angel Island, that is."  
"Can't you use chaos control?" Glad said absently. She covered one eye, then the other, trying to see the wisp's aura. It had none. It was invisible to her chaos eye.  
"No, that's Shadow's thing," Knuckles said. Then he tilted his head to one side. "Huh. I wonder if it's possible to learn it? Maria might be able to teach us. Imagine if all of us could chaos control!"  
Glad could only think of the way her eye had hurt as Shadow had warped her to Angel Island. "I'll pass."  
Knuckles glanced at her. "Why, don't you have chaos power? Most people have some."  
Glad considered. "Mother was always too scared of chaos power. She never even let me be tested. Then when I was ten, I found this funny crystal mixed in with some machinery I was digging up."  
Knuckles raised an eyebrow. "Go on."  
"Well ... I really wanted it. It was kind of jagged, like it had broken off a bigger piece. It was blue on one side and clear on the other. I wanted to make it into a necklace."  
Knuckles nodded. "The raw crystal is strong stuff."  
"I slept with it under my pillow," Glad said, touching her eyepatch. "It gave me this."  
He shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry."  
"Mom got a ton of money for it when she sold it," Glad went on. "I still think about it, sometimes. I wish I still had it. Is that stupid? Wishing for something you know would kill you?"  
Knuckles heaved a slow, deep sigh. "It's stupid. But we all do it. Chaos power doesn't always destroy. It can heal, too."  
A tiny hope sprang to life in Glad's heart. "You know how that robot healed Shadow? Do you think ... would it work on me?"  
He gave her a doubtful look. "You got chaos eye from exposure to chaos power, right? More power might just make it worse."  
Glad nodded, gazing at him, her good eye shining. It had been so long since she had any hope, she clung to it like a drowning man to a life preserver.  
Her desperation was so clear that Knuckles looked down. "What am I saying? Of course you ought to try it. I'll talk to Mecha about it when he gets back."  
They both looked in the direction the bat had been. Glad blinked, scanning. "I don't see her anymore."  
"Nowhere?" Knuckles said in surprise.  
Glad covered her good eye and lifted the eyepatch off her chaos eye to get a clear view. She didn't see Knuckles recoil in horror at the sight. All she saw was the drifting haze of chaos energy that lingered over Angel Island. "No, I don't see her. You think she's dead?"  
"I don't know if we're that lucky," Knuckles said. His voice wobbled a little. But when Glad replaced her eyepatch and opened her good eye, he looked normal. The wisp now floated over one of his broad shoulders, its single eye looking pleased.  
Overhead, the clouds, which had been piling up against the eastern side of the mountain, rumbled with thunder.  
"And that's our cue to go inside," Knuckles said.


	5. Chapter 5

"I don't know if chaos control can be taught," Maria said thoughtfully.  
It was dinnertime. Everyone had gathered in the galley to eat roasted hot dogs and baked potatoes that had been in the ashes for an hour. The food was already getting low.  
"I want to try it!" Sonic exclaimed. "I mean, what can it hurt?"  
Maria exchanged glances with Shadow. While she sat at the stone table with the others, Shadow sat beside the fireplace, eating and pretending to ignore everyone. But he did give Maria a sharp look.  
Maria went on, "It's a grueling process, learning to control chaos. It takes focus and perseverance."  
"And you can hurt yourself in amazingly bad ways," Shadow added sardonically.  
Tails sat with his head resting on his arms on the table beside Sonic. His eyes kept drooping shut, and his dinner was only half-finished. But at this he woke up a little. "I want to learn."  
"Not until you've had some sleep, little bro," Sonic said, patting his back.  
"I'm not tired," Tails said, blinking.  
Amy leaned forward, looking down the table at Knuckles. "What happened to the bat? Is she still here?"  
"Gladiolus can't see her anymore," Knuckles said. "Metal Sonic hasn't come back yet, but Ramussan says he's still patrolling."  
"Did he kill her?"  
Knuckles shrugged. "I have no idea." He glanced at Maria and raised his eyebrows inquiringly.  
Maria closed her eyes and tilted her head back. Even though she was crowded between Amy and Sticks, she was still taller than the rest of them, and both of them moved carefully around her. Alone of all of them, she didn't eat. All she would accept was a glass of water.  
"The bat is alive," Maria said after a moment. "But wherever she is, it dims her signal. Underground, perhaps."  
Gladiolus nodded. "I can't see through rock. That makes sense."  
They ate in silence for a moment. Tails laid his head on his arms again and dozed. Sonic looked at him in concern. "Tails, you can't fix that whole cannon by yourself."  
The fox jerked awake. "I borrowed some of Ramussan's robots. They're working while I'm up here."  
"Good," Sonic said. "Then you can get some sleep."  
"I can't," Tails said, ears flattening. "There's only four days left now, Sonic. We don't stand a chance against NME without it."  
"And you start making mistakes when you're tired," Sonic retorted. "The robots can work all night. Ramussan can worry about them."  
Tails yawned. "All right, all right."  
Amy looked at Maria and Shadow. "So what's involved in learning chaos control?"  
Again a wary glance passed between the two. "We both work it differently," Maria said. "I build a pattern of chaos power in time and space."  
Shadow bristled a little at divulging such secrets, but he admitted, "I focus on my destination."  
"So," Sonic said slowly, "chaos control is unique to everyone?"  
Maria looked thoughtful. "Perhaps. I'm not normal, you understand."  
"Because I am?" Shadow snapped.  
She smiled at him. "Nobody ever accused you of being normal, Shadow dear."  
The black hedgehog went back to eating with a small, pleased smile.  
"So, who wants to try to learn?" Knuckles said, raising a hand.  
Sonic's hand shot up, along with Amy's and Sticks's. Tails raised his, too, but Sonic pushed it down. "Not tonight, kiddo."  
Gladiolus gazed at her plate and didn't say anything.  
"Very well," Maria said, gazing around the table. "We shall convene in the main hall. Knuckles, might we borrow your chaos emerald?"  
He nodded slowly, glancing at Gladiolus's eyepatch. "You think that's wise?"  
"It's necessary for training," Maria replied. "Besides, cut chaos crystal is less volatile than the raw form. The order imposed by the facets diminishes its danger."  
Everyone rose from the table. Knuckles departed to retrieve the chaos emerald from its hiding place. Sonic and Tails tried to help with dishes, but Amy ordered Sonic to take Tails to bed and make sure he stayed there.  
This left Amy, Sticks, Gladiolus, Maria, and Shadow to clean up, which they did fairly quickly. The sink had an odd pump beside it. When the correct valves were turned, clean water spurted from a faucet.  
As they finished, Maria and Shadow had a short, fierce argument off in a corner. It was odd to see them, the thin, pale human in her borrowed clothes, and the short, black hedgehog with the slightly-glowing red stripes. Gladiolus watched them, keeping her chaos eye closed against the blinding light of Maria.  
Their argument was conducted in an undertone, but Gladiolus heard Shadow say, "None of them are built for it!"  
To which Maria replied, "Neither are we, love. They tampered with us, but they didn't create us."  
Shadow's objections subsided into grumbling. He accompanied the group into the main hall.  
Knuckles met them with a fist-sized gem in one hand that glowed a steady green. Gladiolus saw it as a shining star in his hand. It was even brighter than the broken crystal that had damaged her eye. She had a sudden, violent urge to steal it and run away. Instead, she retreated to a corner where she could watch in safety-and remove herself from the temptation to touch more chaos crystal.  
Maria and Shadow murmured to each other for a moment. Then they faced the group. Maria took the chaos emerald from Knuckles and held it up. "We feel that a demonstration is necessary. Shadow, you first."  
Shadow took the chaos emerald and gazed at it for a moment. He grinned. Then he disappeared in a sparkle of green light. He reappeared halfway up the stairs. Everyone pointed and exclaimed. Shadow disappeared again and reappeared on the lintel of one of the huge doorways, ten feet above the floor. Then he teleported back to Maria's side.  
Everyone clapped. Shadow's grin widened and changed a little, becoming less cruel and more open. It was as if he had been mocking everyone with his power, and was genuinely surprised and pleased by their applause. Gladiolus saw some of the red leave his aura for the first time.  
Maria took the chaos emerald next. She gazed at it a moment, shrugged, and handed it back. "I don't need it." She raised one hand and swirled it in the air, as if she was speaking in sign language.  
She vanished and reappeared at the other side of the room. She repeated the gesture and appeared on the stairs, as Shadow had, before returning to her starting point. Everyone clapped for her, too.  
"Now," she said, as everyone quieted down, "you will have to find your own method for using chaos control. In order to do that, you must all focus deeply on finding the power within yourselves. All of you have it. Therefore I want all of you in your bunks, meditating. Tomorrow we'll see if we can move to the next step."  
The group exchanged disappointed glances. "I didn't realize I was going to have to sit still for this," Sonic muttered.  
Shadow said condescendingly, "They put me into a sensory-deprivation tank until I figured it out. You've got it easy, hedgehog."  
"You go crazy in those tanks," Amy whispered to Sonic as they walked toward the crew bunker.  
"Who says Shads is sane?" Sonic whispered back.  
Gladiolus waited until everyone else had drifted away in the direction of the crew bunker. Then she approached Maria, who was speaking to Shadow softly as he turned the chaos emerald this way and that.  
"We'll see if any of them are capable," Maria was saying.  
"I doubt it," Shadow said. "None of them have the self-discipline."  
"Excuse me," said Glad.  
They turned to her. Maria smiled. Shadow, while he didn't smile, didn't act like he hated her the way he did the rest.  
"Do you think ... maybe I could learn chaos control, too? Or would it kill me faster?" Glad indicated her eyepatch.  
Shadow and Maria exchanged a look. "Well," Maria said delicately, "if you can learn it, it can't do you any more harm. And if you can't, well, the meditation won't harm you, either."  
Shadow held out the chaos emerald. "Simple test. Does it hurt you to touch this?"  
It summed them up so well, Glad thought. Careful, gentle Maria, and practical, blunt Shadow. _I hope nothing happens to them. I want them to stay exactly like this._  
She reached out and took the chaos emerald.  
It blazed in her hand like a green star, heavy, smooth, and a little warm. The facets caught the gem's own light and scattered it in rainbows and glints around the dim hall. Glad turned it this way and that, making the glints spin across the floor and walls.  
"It's beautiful," she said. "But I don't feel anything."  
"Good," Shadow said. "You're not supposed to. The power is only supposed to come when you call it. That's why saying 'chaos control' works the way it does."  
"I had wondered about that," Gladiolus replied. "So, to use this, I have to find my own chaos power first?"  
Shadow nodded. "You draw on the emerald with it."  
"But you chaos control without an emerald," Glad pointed out. "So does Maria."  
Shadow grinned wolfishly. "We have secrets."  
Maria added, "It comes of our upbringing."  
Glad handed the emerald to Shadow. "My upbringing wasn't so interesting. I think, if my father had lived, things would have been different."  
"Who was he?" Shadow said, too casually, looking at the emerald instead of her.  
"His name was Amaryllis," Glad replied.  
A look passed between Maria and Shadow so swiftly she almost missed it-a look of shocked recognition. Then it was gone. Maria's face was calm and sympathetic, and Shadow was unsmiling.  
"You knew him?" Glad said, looking at them both.  
"Of course not," Maria said. "That's silly. By the way, how old are you?"  
"Twenty-two."  
Maria smiled-a slow, steady smile she couldn't seem to control. "My. You're older than you look."  
"I know," Gladiolus sighed, pushing back her mane of dreadlocks. "It's these. My long hair makes me look young."  
"It's beautiful," Maria said. "May I touch it?"  
Glad nodded. Maria ran her hand down Glad's dreadlocks. "I thought they'd be soft, but they're so stiff."  
"The front ones are soft," Glad said, flipping the short locks that framed her face. "I can't do anything with the back ones."  
Maria nodded at Shadow. He circled Glad and inspected her dreadlocks, too. They seemed to exchange unspoken communication, because they nodded at each other.  
"This has been extremely pleasant, Gladiolus," Maria said. "Do work on that meditation. I'd like to see what you're capable of."  
Glad bade them goodnight and went to the crew bunker.  
Maria and Shadow watched her go.  
"Amaryllis was in unit D," Shadow murmured. "Same hair. Everyone in D had those crazy flower names."  
"I thought so," Maria murmured back. "I didn't know he escaped, let alone married."  
"We all escaped during the accident," Shadow whispered, as if he was speaking of forbidden things. "I opened all the quarantine rooms and let them out. The scientists didn't care about them."  
"She mentioned her mother's paranoia," Maria whispered. "No wonder."  
Shadow searched Maria's face. "Is there any cure for her eye? It seems such a waste."  
Maria drew a deep breath and exhaled with her eyes closed. When she opened them, they glowed a faint blue. "Yes. But only a Guardian can perform the working, and then only under certain circumstances."  
Shadow blinked. "The robot with the healing powers couldn't do it?"  
"He can only repair wounds," Maria replied. "Chaos eye is a curse. The very fact that she has it tells me far more about her life than I think she even knows."  
Shadow grimaced. "I think we both know more about her than she does."

* * *

Gladiolus thought she had been unaffected by the chaos emerald. But as she walked down the hall to the crew bunker, her bad eye began to ache.  
"Oh drat," she thought. "I must be more sensitive to chaos power than I thought."  
She crept into the girls room, so as not to disturb anyone. Sticks was asleep in her bunk, but Amy lay awake in her bunk. She stirred as Glad entered.  
"Any luck?" Glad whispered.  
"Meditation is easy," Amy whispered back. "But I can't seem to find any chaos power inside me. Mostly I'm planning to remodel the galley."  
"I'm going to try," Glad whispered, climbing into her bunk. "How do you meditate?"  
"First you clear your mind. Slow breathing. Then you focus down on one thing, like an idea or an image."  
That sounded like the perfect way to fall asleep. Glad tried it sitting up, but the ache in her eye grew worse. She lay down, which eased the pain for a while. She searched inside herself for chaos power, but all she found was a buried loathing of her own shyness. She also found a growing concern about her mother and aunt. They must be so worried. They probably wouldn't have called the police-her mother would be too scared to do that-but they would be looking for her. What if they found her abandoned shovel and bucket on the beach and thought she had been kidnapped?  
"Well, I sort of was," she thought with ironic humor. "Except it was kidnapping to save me."  
This wasn't clearing her mind any. Glad tried to push these thoughts aside and concentrate on finding her chaos power. Her eye throbbed in its socket. She tried not to focus on it, but the worse the pain grew, the more it demanded her attention.  
She twisted away from it and dove deep into herself again. This time she found her dreams of flying.  
She'd had them since she was little-wonderful dreams of wide-open spaces and freedom, with the clouds billowing below her like ethereal mountains. Often she had them on nights when she went to bed hungry because there wasn't any food. It was an escape, a way to flee her dismal life.  
She indulged in a half-awake dream of flying, trying to escape the growing pain in her eye. For some reason, in this dream, she was soaring over Angel Island, its soaring mountains and rolling forests spread below her.  
The pain in her eye woke her up. Her face was wet with bloody tears, and she could barely open her eyelids. She had a set of eye drops for when it flared up like this, but they had been left behind at home.  
Water. She needed water to wash it clean. Glad fumbled out of the bunk and down the ladder. Amy was asleep by this time, so Glad tiptoed to the restroom. Here a small stream flowed out of a crack in the ceiling and into a basin. It had green algae growing in the bottom, but the water itself was clear enough. Glad bathed her face in it, blinking her bad eye. The water stung, but it washed away the gunk that had built up. Her whole head ached. Her eye burned as if from a tiny fever.  
So much for learning chaos control. Touching a chaos emerald had caused a massive flare-up. If only that robot was around-maybe he could heal it.  
Glad stepped out of the restroom and hesitated. Where might the robot spend his nights? He was called the Ghost, so he might lurk anywhere, keeping watch. Hopefully that bat hadn't gotten in.  
Glad crept down the passage to the main hall and peeked out. The lights were off, but her chaos eye picked up glowing power coming from various doorways. The brightest light came from the stairway Knuckles had warned her away from. The island's power source, he had said.  
If the robot was anywhere, he would be down there, recharging his batteries. But it was dangerous. Chaos power had already hurt her so badly. Knuckles hadn't told her not to go down there, but that's what he had meant.  
Glad dithered, torn between wanting to honor Knuckles's command and longing for the pain to stop. It didn't matter if she was blind in one eye forever-she just wanted it to stop hurting.  
It wouldn't hurt to just go down the steps a little way, would it? Just far enough to see if there was anyone down there. She crossed the hall and crept down the stairs, keeping close to the wall.  
The stairway curved to the right, so for a while she couldn't see anything. As she neared the bottom, a large room came into view, along with an ammonia smell that stung her nose. In this room were crystal clusters bigger than she was, green and yellow, growing out of chemical pools covered in seed crystal. All of them glowed gently, illuminating the room and two doorways-a small one off to one side, and a huge one straight ahead.  
The huge doorway had a pair of enormous stone doors, but one of them stood open a crack. Glad crossed the room, avoiding the touch of the chaos crystals, and peeked through the door.  
Inside was a cave with rough stone walls and a polished marble floor. In the center was a pyramid, and on top of the pyramid was a glowing emerald the size of a small car.  
"I'm surrounded by chaos crystal," Glad thought. This must be the island's power source-that much chaos crystal could probably power a city. Her chaos eye was overwhelmed by the dazzle. If the little chaos emerald had looked like a star, this behemoth was a sun that warmed her where she stood.  
The sheer wonder of the giant emerald drew her in. She slipped through the open door, crept across the marble floor, and stealthily climbed the pyramid's steps. Her conscience pricked her. Knuckles had warned her away from this place. He hadn't wanted her to know about it, and he had been right. Yet her eye ached so badly.  
There was no sign of the robot, or anybody else, for that matter. Glad reached the top of the pyramid and stood gazing into the giant gem. She knew better than to try to touch it, not with her chaos eye trying to burn itself out of her head. But she could look at it and watch the glow catch the facets and sparkle along the floor.  
Something moved inside the gem. Glad squinted. Was there someone on the other side, or was there a picture inside? She circled the emerald, but there was nothing there. So the picture was inside, then. Something murky and out of focus.  
She knelt, peering through the nearest facet, as close as she could get without touching the gem. The murky shadow swirled and tossed, like the sea on a stormy night. Or was it the sea? That had been a wave curling and breaking.  
Out of the sea rose the head of a dragon. It had the super-long jaw of a moray eel, but frills and fins decorated its back and neck. Dread seeped into Glad's heart. The crashing waves around it looked like the ones at the shore where she had found Maria. Again she felt the cold touch of the water against her boot, and the knowledge that a hostile mind had taken note of her existence.  
The dragon's head turned this way and that, the tiny eyes searching for her. Did it know she was looking at it? Or was the emerald showing her a picture to symbolize the beach monster? She crouched a little lower, her hair draping her like a cloak, trying to hide from its gaze.  
"What are you doing here?"  
Glad jumped and fell sideways, barely saving herself from falling off the pyramid. Knuckles stood in the doorway, fists clenched, eyes dark. "I told you not to come in here!"  
She shrank together as if preparing to duck a blow. "I'm sorry."  
The red echidna stood there a long moment, as if uncertain what to do. "Well ... come down."  
He wasn't that mad. More ... concerned, she thought. Cross that she had disobeyed him, as anybody would be.  
The image in the emerald was still there. Glad beckoned to him. "There's a picture in this emerald! Come look, quick!"  
Knuckles's expression changed to professional interest. He jogged up the pyramid steps two at a time. "You haven't touched it, have you?"  
"No," Glad said. "My eye was hurting so badly. I was trying to find the robot to see if he could heal me. Then I found this place, and the light in the emerald changed to ... this."  
Knuckles stood beside the gem, leaned his elbows on it, and looked into its top. She envied his casual familiarity with chaos crystal. If she did that, her eye would explode.  
His eyes widened as he saw the dragon. "What on Mobius is that?"  
"The water monster," Glad said.  
To her horror, as soon as Knuckles spoke, the dragon's head jerked to one side. Knuckles saw it, too.  
"It knows we're watching it," Glad whispered.  
Knuckles dropped to his knees beside the emerald, arms wrapped around his head. "Don't," he whispered. "Don't talk."  
Glad watched the dragon's jaws open in a silent roar. Knuckles ground his teeth, eyes screwed shut.  
"You can hear him?" she gasped.

* * *

In Knuckles's head, the monster was roaring-a yelling, screaming roar that went on far too long. As the roar died away, words replaced it. "JUSTICE WILL BE DONE." It stared at him out of the Master Emerald. Such a thing was impossible, yet the monster's distant eye gazed into his own.  
"What do you want?" Knuckles whispered.  
Beside him, Gladiolus glanced from him to the monster in the emerald. Then she covered her mouth with both hands and cowered a little. Swift on the uptake, this girl. How had she contacted the monster through the Master Emerald without touching anything? Or had the monster sought her out?  
"I want justice for the wrongs committed against me," the monster snarled in his head.  
"What wrongs?" Knuckles said. "You've been trapped for at least three hundred years! Nobody remembers you or how to fix things."  
The dragon sank into the ocean up to its chin, as if considering this. "The wizards trapped me, indeed. Now new masters have sought to control me. They offer death and bloodshed in vengeance. But I seek the death only of the bloodline of Solaris."  
"Who's Solaris?" Knuckles whispered to Gladiolus.  
She shook her head. "He was a king, but I don't remember. History stuff."  
A king. Shadow had condescendingly told Knuckles a story like a fairytale, of kings who went to war and used the sea and the wind as weapons. The sea had grown so angry that the wizards had to use the other elements against it, but they were killed in the process.  
He needed more information, and the monster was chatty for once. Knuckles drew a deep breath. If only he was better at clever questions and riddles. Amy would get the monster's whole life story and a psychological analysis after two questions. "Okay, first, are you the sea power that the king used in his war?"  
"Yes," the monster growled. It was a low hiss in Knuckles's head, deep and dangerous.  
Knuckles thought hard to frame his next question. "Was that the injustice? That he made you fight?"  
"No." The voice made his teeth buzz. "My beloved betrayed me and caused me to slay Narua. I slew the traitor, but the wizards decreed that I must be also slain. They succeeded only in imprisoning me. But it was my false beloved who caused me to strike Narua. I have been falsely sentenced. I demand justice."  
This made no sense to Knuckles. He whispered to Glad, "He accidentally killed someone named Narua."  
Glad's eyes widened. "The goddess?"  
The monster was still speaking, and Knuckles closed his eyes to listen as closely as he could.  
"You are one of their race, echidna. Your death would suffice. But the one I crave is the human infused with chaos. Throw her to me, and no land-dweller will ever see me again."  
Knuckles drew a sharp breath as if someone had struck him in the stomach. He swayed and braced both hands against the floor. A sound halfway between a sob and a cough burst from him. "I can't accept either option."  
"Then I will destroy you all," the monster roared. It plunged back into the sea. The vision faded from the Master Emerald, and the voice in his head went silent.  
It wanted to kill him, but mostly it wanted Maria. Knuckles leaned his forehead against the Master Emerald, his heart beating painfully against his ribs.  
"What did he say?" Gladiolus whispered. "Knuckles?"  
He couldn't speak, not with such a giant knot in his throat. He sat there with the Master Emerald's cool side against his head, battling the horror that threatened to swamp him.  
Gladiolus slid closer to him. Hesitantly she put an arm around his shoulders. He was so much bigger than her that she could barely reach, but it was a kind gesture. They sat like that for a while, not talking. Every so often Glad would press the heel of her hand against her bad eye, as if it pained her, but she didn't say anything.  
Knuckles drew deep breaths until he regained control of his voice. "Thanks."  
She withdrew her arm into the shadow of her dreadlocks. "You're welcome." She searched his face earnestly, but with a shyness he found endearing. She was so different from the rest of his friends.  
Haltingly, Knuckles repeated the monster's confusing story, ending in its ultimatum. Glad listened, frowning, until he reached the end.  
She straightened and looked at him, her good eye suddenly bright with anger. "How dare he! Just because he's a powerful monster doesn't give him the right to demand sacrifices. What a bully!"  
Her sudden spunk surprised him. "You saw him just now. A thing that size could probably drag the island right out of the sky. And he said that he has new masters. How much you want to bet that NME got to him somehow?"  
Gladiolus bit her lower lip and looked at the Master Emerald, as if hoping it would show her something else that would help them. "Promise me you won't throw yourself to the monster."  
Knuckles vividly recalled his promise to himself to protect the island and his friends no matter the cost. What if it cost him his life? His breath caught in his chest for a second. "I ... I can't."  
Gladiolus grabbed one of his big hands it and held it in both of hers. She gazed at him pleadingly. "You're not going to give him what he wants!"  
"I won't unless there's no other choice," Knuckles said quietly, looking at his big hand in her two small ones. She was so tiny, yet they were the same age. He felt like a giant in comparison.  
He moved his hand in hers. "I didn't know you cared so much."  
Glad realized what she was doing and released him. She ducked her head and turned away. After a moment, she said carefully over one shoulder, "You've been far kinder to me than I deserve. I can't bear to see you senselessly killed. We have no way of knowing if the monster will keep his word. Besides." She gulped a little. "It might be me he wants."  
Knuckles stiffened. "What makes you say that?"  
"It discovered Maria and me at the same time. It appeared to me in the emerald. But it couldn't speak to me, so it spoke to you."  
This was a loophole that hadn't occurred to him. Knuckles pondered it, hopeful, and yet ashamed at having such a hope-that the monster would take her and not him. He cleared his throat. "It has a vendetta against some bloodline. Know anything about your ancestors?"  
Glad shook her head. "My mother's from Bygone. I don't know about my father. Mother said once that he was nearly pure blood Ancient. I don't know what that means."  
It sent prickles down Knuckles's neck, but he didn't know why. Images of Lyric, the snake in power armor, swam through his mind's eye.  
"We have work ahead of us," Knuckles said. He climbed to his feet. "Come on, we'd better go to bed."  
"But my eye," Glad said. "It hurts so bad, I can't sleep. Is that robot around?"  
"Yeah, I'll call him in." Knuckles looked toward the door. "Mecha?"  
Metal Sonic stepped through the doors, red eyes glowing in the near-darkness. Glad sucked in her breath, but otherwise held still.  
Metal Sonic spoke in Knuckles's head, bypassing the need for a headset. It was a side effect of Knuckles being the Guardian-he could hear things nobody else could.  
"I have doubts about the effects of my abilities on her disease," the robot said.  
"Just try," Knuckles said.  
Knuckles and Gladiolus descended the stairs and met Metal Sonic at the bottom. Gladiolus pulled off her eyepatch. Knuckles looked away. Her eye was a bloodshot mess around a bright blue pupil. It looked alien and wrong, and did funny things to his stomach.  
Metal Sonic raised one hand and gently placed it over Glad's eye. She flinched at his touch, but held herself still. The gem-shape burned into the robot's palms began to glow a faint yellow.  
"It burns," Gladiolus murmured.  
Metal Sonic withdrew his hand at once. But Glad motioned to him. "It's all right. Keep going. It feels like medicine."  
Slowly, Metal Sonic returned his hand to her eye. As he resumed healing, he said privately to Knuckles, "I fear I am making her worse."  
Knuckles watched anxiously as Glad stood there, eyes closed, wearing a serene expression. After a while she said, "That's enough."  
When Metal Sonic withdrew his hand, some of the awful inflammation had left her eye, and the white was nearly the proper color again. She blinked. "Thank you."  
Metal Sonic bowed slightly.  
Glad's shyness had come back. She gave Knuckles a small wave. "Well, um ... goodnight." She dashed away up the stairs.  
Knuckles watched her go. He couldn't see himself tossing her into the sea like some primitive trying to calm the elements with a sacrifice. No, he was the Guardian, and the monster was his responsibility. Besides, he had seen it in its prison. It had hunted him in the ruins. It definitely wanted him.  
Or Maria. But that was out of the question. Maria probably would go to the monster if she knew it would save them all, but she was too valuable. The monster would probably give her to NME, anyway. They were all in league.  
Metal Sonic turned to him. "You are upset?"  
Knuckles shrugged. "Just thinking. Come on. I need to talk to you and Ramussan."


	6. Chapter 6

Rouge the bat passed the night in the remains of a collapsed stone passage.  
She found it while exploring a deep crack between two boulders. At first she thought she had discovered a secret entrance into the underground fortress-but thirty feet inside, the ceiling had caved in, blocking it forever. But the tunnel made a good place to camp for the night-it was dry, anyway.  
Her invisible stalker didn't leave her until after she took shelter in the passage. It annoyed her-she needed to survey the island, especially the entrances into the underground fortress, if her colleagues were to properly plan an assault. She needed backup.  
She pondered the problem as she camped in the tunnel, swathed in mosquito netting that made her sweat. But when dawn brightened the sky, she had a solution.  
NME's ship was four days away, traveling at full speed. Any robots they dispatched, traveling at higher speeds, would still take another two days to arrive. No, she needed robots from a closer location. That meant soliciting the help of one of NME's inventors: Eggman.  
She went outside and set up her satellite phone on a rock, positioning the tiny dish to point exactly south, toward NME's private communications satellite. She pulled up Eggman's number and called.  
After a few minutes, Eggman answered, sounding out of sorts. "Who is this? Do you know what time it is?"  
"Hello, Doctor," Rouge purred. "I'm Rouge the Bat from National Machine Enterprises."  
Eggman's tone suddenly became very friendly. "Rouge! How pleasant to speak to you again."  
"Yes, yes. You are aware that the Fellstorm is coming to claim Angel Island?"  
Eggman cleared his throat. "I'm aware of its approach, yes."  
Rouge grinned at the consternation in his voice. Eggman was running scared. "I am currently scouting Angel Island. But the inhabitants are being annoying. I need your robots to create a distraction."  
"Well-you see, Angel Island is currently aloft, and I only have so many flying robots-"  
"You'll be compensated, of course."  
"You shall have the whole fleet," Eggman finished.  
"I'm so glad you're able to help me, Doctor. I'll put in a good word to Tasha for you. When can I expect the robots?"  
Eggman didn't answer for a moment, but keys clicked in the background. "Expect them in about ninety minutes."  
"Excellent. Goodbye, Eggman."  
Rouge hung up and packed away her gear. Let the islanders try to annoy her now. Their hands would be too full to bother about one bat quietly taking measurements.

* * *

"Watch this," Sonic said. He stood in the main hall with the green chaos emerald in his hand. "Chaos ... control!"  
He blinked forward three feet. "Did you see? I did it!"  
Everyone clapped except Shadow, who scowled.  
After a scanty breakfast, the team had reassembled in the main hall to take another lesson from Maria in controlling chaos power. As it turned out, only Sonic had been able to master the necessary focus in one night.  
"It's like when I'm trying to break the sound barrier," Sonic explained, as if everyone could relate. "I have to focus so hard on the movements in order to get my speed up. This is just like it."  
Amy brushed her pink spines away from her face. "I'm familiar with meditation techniques, but I couldn't pinpoint any chaos energy."  
Sticks agreed. Knuckles didn't say anything. He had dark smudges under his eyes, like he hadn't slept well. Tails wasn't even there-he had returned to his beloved ARK cannon. Gladiolus sat on the steps with a notepad, writing avidly and not seeming to pay attention.  
Maria didn't seem to mind. She clapped the loudest and beamed at Sonic, which deepened Shadow's scowl. "Well done, Sonic! You're already in touch with your own power."  
"Yep," Sonic said, rearranging his bandanna, "it must come from fighting Eggman all the time. I've totally got the moves."  
"Bah," said Shadow, walking up to Sonic. "You may think you've mastered chaos control, but you know nothing."  
Sonic gazed at him, wary but unruffled. "Yep. I'm a beginner. Care to teach me?"  
Shadow clenched and unclenched his fists, as if considering hitting him in the face. Then he said, "Try to follow me." The black hedgehog blinked away to the middle of the staircase.  
Gladiolus looked up from her writing and eyed Shadow cautiously. But Shadow's entire attention was focused on Sonic. His stance was arrogant, daring the other hedgehog to match him.  
Sonic crouched a little, as if preparing to sprint. He bounced a little on the balls of his feet, staring at the stairs without blinking. Then he muttered, "Chaos control."  
He teleported to the bottom step, where he tripped and fell, hitting his face on the stone. Glad saw his lip split. She jumped to her feet. "Oh gosh! Are you all right?"  
"Fine," Sonic said, popping to his feet as if nothing had happened. He grinned, and there was blood in his teeth. "So, Shads, what'd I do wrong?"  
"Altitude," Shadow said in his most withering tones. "It's not enough to consider distance. You must also consider the height or depth of your destination."  
Sonic wiped his mouth on his arm and looked at the smear of red left behind. "You might have told me."  
Shadow blinked away across the hall, where he leaned against a pillar. "Repeated failure is the most efficient teacher."  
Sonic gripped the chaos emerald, sucking his lip, and considered his own elevation compared to Shadow's. He deliberately climbed ten steps higher. Then he said, "Chaos control."  
The blue hedgehog blinked into existence beside Shadow at the pillar. Shadow acknowledged his success with a single nod. "Chaos control can also halt time, enabling you to move in hyper-time. Observe."  
Shadow vanished. Sonic pitched forward and hit the floor on all fours as if he had been shoved. Shadow reappeared behind him and calmly circled the blue hedgehog like a lecturing teacher. "I was moving too fast for the eye to follow. You could not defend against an attack from hyper-time."  
Sonic climbed to his feet, ears flattened. Despite his self-control, his rage was beginning to show through. "All right, wise guy. Two can play at that game."  
He managed to teleport around Shadow several times, but he couldn't seem to enter the hyper-time state. Shadow's smile grew to a mocking sneer.  
Gladiolus crept off the stairs and slipped up to Knuckles. "Can we go somewhere else?" she whispered, as across the room, Shadow tripped Sonic with a well-placed foot. "I can't stand this."  
Knuckles passed one hand over his face, as if embarrassment threatened to overwhelm him. "Yeah. This way."  
Gladiolus followed him around a corner and through a doorway she had not yet entered. Here was a computer room with screens, a long console, a table, and-thank heavens!-a couple of padded chairs. Glad sank into one with a sigh of relief. "There's nowhere to sit around here."  
Knuckles sat in the other chair and propped his feet on the table, which was covered in machine parts. "Sonic better learn quick, or Shadow's going to maim him."  
"Can't Mecha heal him?" Glad asked anxiously.  
Knuckles nodded. "That's the only reason I didn't call Shadow off. Maria didn't, either, did you notice?"  
"She's watching like a hawk," Gladiolus said. "I know she won't let Shadow hurt him too badly, but I can't-I just can't watch."  
They sat in agreeable silence for a moment. Knuckles closed his eyes as if threatening to fall asleep right there. Then he sat up, plucked a headset off the table, and handed it to Glad.  
She took it reverently. "You're letting me listen to your secrets?"  
"Hardly secrets," Knuckles said with a half-smile. "I had a talk with Ramussan and Mecha after our little vision last night."  
Glad pressed the earbud into her ear and settled the mouthpiece against her cheek. "Who's Ramussan?"  
"Me," said a strange voice in her headset.  
She jumped. "Who-who is that?"  
"Angel Island's defense AI," Knuckles said. "Ram, this is Gladiolus, our guest."  
"You must be pretty important, if he's letting you talk to me," Ramussan said. He sounded like a person, not a computer.  
Gladiolus sat very still. "You don't think you have to defend the island from me, do you?"  
"Of course not," Ramussan said in overly-hearty tones that meant exactly the opposite. "Not yet, anyway. If the Guardian speaks for you, I won't intentionally kill you."  
"Ramussan," Knuckles growled.  
"I was kidding, I was kidding!" the AI insisted.  
"Anyway," Knuckles said, "Ramussan shed some light on some of things the monster said last night."  
"For one thing, his name is Perfect Chaos," Ramussan said, all business now. "He's as ancient as Mobius itself."  
"And Narua is the air goddess," Gladiolus added. "Iblis is the fire god and Gaia is the earth god. Right?"  
"You know your deities," Knuckles said.  
Gladiolus nodded. "Mother and my aunt are very religious. I make offerings to Fith. Someday I want to visit his statue in the jungle. They say he speaks to the reverent."  
Knuckles looked startled. "The Speaker?"  
"Fith," Glad corrected. Then she drew a long breath. "Have you spoken to him?"  
"You might say that," Knuckles said slowly. "Uh, as we were saying ..."  
Ramussan resumed his lecture. "Narua, the air elemental, was destroyed in the Calamity. I was unaware that she was destroyed by Perfect Chaos. Perhaps the island crew didn't know. But Chaos considered himself on trial for her death. He said he killed her by accident?"  
"Yes," Knuckles said. "Or that someone made him kill her, and he turned on that person. He called them his beloved."  
"Not King Solaris?" Gladiolus asked.  
"Records show that he did turn against King Solaris," Ramussan said. "But there was a team of echidnas whose job was to guide Chaos's attacks. I assume he had bonded with one of them."  
Knuckles massaged his forehead. "So we still don't know how to give him this justice he wants."  
"He's already given you his demands, sir," Ramussan said in a low voice. "I don't recommend you giving in to them. Ever."  
Gladiolus studied Knuckles's face. "You told him?"  
"Yes, but nobody else," Knuckles muttered.  
"Good," said Glad, "because I wasn't going to tell anyone, either." The monster's requirements were a continual horror in the back of her mind. It was one reason she couldn't handle Shadow picking on Sonic-more unfair bullying and people being pointlessly hurt.  
"So," Ramussan went on, "I need more information. I need someone to go to the mainland and pick up as much information as they can fit on a data stick. Newspapers, libraries, I don't care, just as long as it's digital media."  
"Sonic could fly the biplane," Knuckles said thoughtfully. "I don't think Tails will leave the ARK cannon."  
"Or Sonic might chaos control," Glad pointed out.  
"If Shadow hasn't killed him yet," Knuckles said. "There's also those robot dragons. Amy showed them to me. They serve us, and they can get on and off the island."  
"Good," Ramussan said, "because Amy was complaining this morning about the state of the supplies. There's no way you could withstand a siege."  
Knuckles looked at Glad. "Whatever method we use, I want you to go back to Bygone. There's no point in you being mixed up in this."  
What he meant was that he didn't want her to get hurt. Glad read between the lines. She was half-homesick anyway, so she nodded. "I have been worried about Mom." But even as she spoke, she realized that she would sit at home and worry about everyone here. Especially the burly red echidna across from her, who looked so overwhelmed and tired.  
As she groped for words to tactfully articulate this, Ramussan said suddenly, "Alert. Enemy robots approaching. I estimate sixty-two flying wasps. ETA: twenty minutes."  
"Eggman," Knuckles muttered. He jumped to his feet. "Come on, Glad, I've got to get you clear before the fighting starts."  
Indignation flickered inside her as she hurried after him. "You don't think I could fight?"  
"Could you?" he said over his shoulder. "You can't tolerate Sonic being taken down a peg."  
Glad studied the stone floor under her boots. He was right. Even if she could fight robots, she didn't want to. Her entire life had been devoted to hiding and avoiding notice.  
In the main hall, Shadow had been teaching Sonic to teleport a statue bigger than himself. Sonic had already accidentally left behind the statue's arm and part of its head. They lay on the floor, sliced cleanly away, the cut edges smooth and weirdly polished.  
Amy Rose pointed at the severed arm as the echidnas walked in. "Sonic's not taking me anywhere."  
"Oh come on," Sonic said. "That was my first try. Look." He teleported the statue all around the room without leaving any more of it behind.  
"Good," Knuckles said. "Ramussan just detected sixty-three of Eggman's robots flying in. Could you take Glad home?"  
"I wanted Sonic to get groceries," Amy said.  
"Hello," Shadow snarled. "I'll take the living cargo. Sonic can handle the snacks."  
"Dude!" Sonic exclaimed. "Are you turning team player, Shads? High five!"  
Shadow didn't hold up his hand. Instead, he turned to Gladiolus. "Do you need to pick up anything before you leave?"  
Glad's fingers flew to her headset. She glanced at Knuckles, but he was examining the statue's severed arm and making a point of not looking at her. She was allowed to take the headset home? Her heart quivered with sudden emotion she didn't understand.  
"Yes," she said, stepping forward and taking Shadow's hand. "I have everything I need."

* * *

Rouge set up her surveying scope on the edge of a little hill. She spread out the map she was drawing of Angel Island, and began taking measurements.  
She worked calmly and thoroughly, even though in the distance, people were battling a swarm of robot wasps. She had watched where her enemies emerged from the mountain, and now was marking down her estimate of where the hidden door lay on the west side of the mountain.  
Beside her on a rock sat her smartphone. The timer app was counting down from ten minutes. She kept an eye on it while she worked. When the timer beeped, she packed up her equipment. In the distance, the robots staged a mock retreat. Then they headed for the east entrance. Rouge slung on her backpack and followed, gliding through the trees.  
As she expected, this flushed her enemies from the east entrance. They fought the robots there, giving her time to map the east gate's location.  
"Now," she murmured, lifting a high-powered spotting scope, "let's get a visual."  
The scope let her see a red echidna, a pink hedgehog, and a brown badger smashing wasps out of the air. No sign of a human, a blue hedgehog, or a two-tailed fox.  
"That's odd," Rouge murmured. "Sonic and Tails are missing." She made note of this. She hadn't expected to see the human-they probably kept her locked safely away. But it was strange that the group had divided their numbers. What strategy were they using?  
She set up her satellite phone and called her boss. "Tasha, I have an update ..."

* * *

With a flash of green light, Shadow and Gladiolus appeared on the rocky beach of eastern Bygone Island. Glad staggered and pressed a hand to her eye-as before, the teleport sent pain stabbing through it.  
Shadow steadied her. "Don't fall down. I'm not going to baby you."  
"The way you babied Sonic?" Glad said, rubbing her eye.  
Shadow smirked. "I went easy on him. I fully expect him to damage himself in his jump to Bygone."  
Glad shrugged. She couldn't change Shadow's loathing of Sonic, much as she disliked it. But she could, perhaps, try to make friends. "Thanks for the lift. There's no way I could ever learn chaos control."  
"Your curse, yes," Shadow said absently, gazing out at the sea.  
Glad blinked. "My curse? It's a disease."  
"It's a curse," Shadow said. "From touching chaos crystal. Nobody ever told you?"  
She shook her head. A curse! Who laid it? Could it be broken?  
Before she could ask these questions, Shadow pointed at the ocean. "Look."  
Glad turned and gasped.  
Angel Island hung in the sky a few miles away, blue-green with distance. But beneath it, the sea curled and rose in twisted columns. One column rose higher than the rest, twisting like a waterspout, it's tip reaching for Angel Island. It stretched too thin and collapsed in a sheet of white spray. More columns rose, twisted together, and reached for the island. These came almost to the island's bottom-most mountain before they collapsed under their own weight.  
Glad wondered if the chaos eye was affecting her brain. She closed her good eye. The columns glowed sky blue with chaos energy. So did some massive thing below them, in the sea.  
"Are you seeing this?" she asked.  
"It's Perfect Chaos," Shadow muttered. He gave a small shiver. "If it reaches the island, I don't know what will happen."  
They watched the rising and falling spirals of water for another long minute. It was graceful and hypnotic, like the motion of fish in an aquarium. But it was so incredibly dangerous.  
"If the monster can reach that high," Glad said slowly, "he could drown Bygone. The whole island is only a few hundred feet above sea level."  
Shadow gave her a sideways look. "Looks like he's busy trying to destroy a different island."  
Glad swallowed.  
Shadow stepped away. "I need to warn Maria."  
He was gone before Glad could say goodbye. Alone now on the shore, she found that she didn't like watching the water creeping into the sky like twisting tentacles. She hurried up the beach toward the path that would take her to Pilings.  
Shadow had dropped her about a mile from home, near where she had been digging when Angel Island had launched. It would take some time to walk back. Glad followed the familiar trail that skirted the edge of the jungle. It was good to be back on familiar ground, knowing where to go and what to do.  
But part of her worried about Angel Island and its crew. Would Shadow tell Knuckles about Perfect Chaos, so near and so determined? He seemed to despise Knuckles worse than he did Sonic.  
Glad flicked on her headset and paused, looking toward the island. What if she was out of range? She was awfully far away. "Hello?"  
First there was static. Then Sonic's voice said, "Hey there, Glad. What's up?"  
Oh yes, Sonic had been going to Bygone, too. "The water monster is trying to reach Angel Island."  
"What? How can you tell?"  
"It's sending up long twisty water bits, trying to get high enough to reach."  
"Oh wow. That's not good. I'll warn everybody. Thanks, Glad." He didn't sound too concerned, but then, he hadn't seen the size of the thing.  
Glad turned off the headset to conserve battery, faintly disappointed. She had really hoped to reach Knuckles. Oh well. She probably wouldn't see him again.  
Unexpectedly depressed by this thought, she trudged onward. "Why am I so sad?" she scolded herself. "You're home! Be happy!" She buried her feelings deep inside where she could pretend they didn't exist. After all, she had to find her mother and aunt and tell them she was under a curse.  
That was a dismal thought. If only Shadow hadn't left so quickly. What curse? How did she get it? All she had done was sleep with the crystal fragment under her pillow. She hadn't offended any witches or touched sacred items.  
Trudging along with her head down, wrapped in gloom, Glad didn't notice her surroundings until a small creature dropped onto the road ahead of her and made a trilling sound. She froze, then recognized it. It was another creature like the wisp Knuckles had picked up, except this one was brilliant red-orange and had three eyes. Its head and tentacles had little spikes at the end that reminded Glad uncomfortably of flames.  
"Oh," she said uncertainly. "Hi. Are you a wisp?"  
It trilled again. Its three eyes half-closed as if it was smiling.  
Glad knelt and held out a hand. "Hello there! Knuckles said that you're friendly."  
The flame-like wisp floated to her and hovered over her palm. She lifted it and gazed into its liquid red eyes. Funny, she could feel the force of its hyper-go-on pressing against her palm as she lifted it.  
"Why did you come to me?" Glad murmured. She hesitantly touched its head with one finger. When it didn't react, she stroked it. The wisp closed its three eyes in enjoyment. It felt warm and soft, like a baby's head.  
More trills sounded from the jungle. A whole crowd of wisps streamed out of the undergrowth and surrounded her. Glad looked around in bemusement. They were red, orange, yellow, green, and blue, and all different shapes, triangle and square included. They chattered to the wisp in her hand, who trilled back.  
"There's certainly a lot of you," she said. "Knuckles wanted to bring you all to Angel Island. Is that what you want?"  
A chorus of excited trilling answered her. So they understood speech. Right. She'd have to watch what she said.  
She turned her headset back on. "Is anybody there?"  
Sonic answered. "Just me. We're at the edge of our range down here."  
"A whole bunch of wisps just came out of the jungle. They want to go to Angel Island."  
"A bunch of what?"  
"Wisps. You know, like that little blue one Knuckles brought in yesterday."  
"Oh, that thing." Sonic sounded dismissive. "Nice for pets. You found more?"  
"A whole flock. Herd. Group."  
The wisps made a noise disconcertingly like laughter.  
"Tell you what," Sonic said. "I'll meet you on the beach outside Pilings at sunset. I'll chaos control them all then. Sound good?"  
"Sounds good," Glad said. "Goodbye." She turned off the headset and looked into the expectant eyes of the wisps. "Sonic will take you there at sunset. For now, come with me."  
Making cheering noises, the wisps floated around her as she set off for home.


	7. Chapter 7

When Shadow told Maria about Perfect Chaos, she said simply, "Yes, I know."  
Maria sat on top of the Master Emerald, legs folded, hands pressed against its top. Her eyes glowed the same green as the crystal. Little sparkles of energy floated around her, and her blond hair stirred as if in a breeze.  
Shadow didn't know whether to wait for her to finish or run away and hide. He opted for sitting on the pyramid's bottom step.  
Maria, herself, needed no food to sustain herself. Instead, she subsisted on chaos power. But it was more than raw hunger that drove her to the Master Emerald-her power web was in danger.  
She felt all the island crew and their connection to her. They appeared in her mind as colored lights, scattered here and there about the palace. Sonic was a distant light out on Bygone Island. All of them shared additional bonds with each other.  
But outsiders threatened those bonds. Rouge the Bat lurked outside, her proximity constantly plucking at Maria's mind.  
 _We want you. We shall have you. You are ours._  
Maria shoved the NME power web away and refused to speak to them, but they worried her. As they drew closer, their power was increasing. They could, perhaps, even overcome Maria herself. NME had a stockpile of chaos crystal fueling them.  
Then there was Perfect Chaos in the sea below Angel Island. He called to her every so often, his voice disconcerting in her mind. "Justice. You promised me. Their sentence stands. It is unjust."  
She didn't answer him, either. How to give him justice when even Ramussan didn't understand his crime or its punishment? He troubled her more than NME. She had given him her word, and Maria always kept her word.  
The third threat was Gladiolus.  
Maria was reluctant to name the echidna as such. But she carried the curse about with her like a violet cloud, dampening Maria's connections with anyone she drew near. Knuckles had spent the most time with her, cutting himself off from Maria. Maria said nothing, but she needed Knuckles. As the Guardian, he connected her to the rest of his friends like a conduit. Now that Gladiolus was gone, Maria breathed easier. But it felt wrong. That curse was evil, and Maria should be seeking to break it, not fleeing from it.  
So she sat on the Master Emerald, drawing on its power, seeking memories stored deep within it. This gem was unbelievably ancient, passed from hand to hand practically from the beginning of the world. Anything that used chaos power was connected, eventually, to the Master Emerald. That treasury of history was stored in the gem for those to use who could. Maria shuddered to think what might happen if NME got their hands on it. Here were memories of life and death, creation and destruction, mercy and judgment.  
Maria looked into the past, seeking the Calamity. She found it, locked in the Master Emerald like a series of shockwaves. Here the power had shattered and shattered again. She gazed upon the greedy pride of kings, and of those who served them with doubt in their hearts. She gazed upon Perfect Chaos as he had been, a benign being who watched over the tides and communed with whales. In one instance, he protected a small island village from a deadly hurricane by holding back the storm surge. Affection grew in her heart. He had been good. His heart had been simple and kind, unconcerned with plots and violence.  
She watched as King Solaris gave orders to a family of poor echidnas who worked as fishermen. She watched the head echidna protest these orders. He was flogged until he agreed to obey. The vision changed. She saw him kneeling on a dock as one of Chaos's water-feelers bathed his wounds, telling Chaos what the king had commanded.  
 _This was his beloved_ , Maria realized. A dear friend who worked alongside him, who respected him and fished in the sea. It hurt her heart, seeing the beginning of the conflict, knowing the outcome. Chaos had been innocent in the beginning, not understanding the horrors of the war that would follow.  
Knuckles entered the emerald chamber and halted, seeing Maria in her trance and Shadow guarding her from a prudent distance.  
"What's going on?" Knuckles said. He didn't go any closer to the power-charged Maria, either.  
Shadow glared at him. "She's meditating. Don't disturb her."  
"Well ..." Knuckles hesitated. "I came to tell you that we took care of Eggman's robots. But Ramussan has detected the first wave of NME's army. They'll make islandfall about midnight."  
Maria's eyes flicked open. "Then we shall prepare to meet them.

* * *

Knuckles descended five flights to stairs through the island to check on Tails and the ARK cannon.  
Thoughts bounced around inside his head like loose ball bearings. NME's first wave of robots were almost here. The ARK cannon wasn't ready. Glad was gone and he probably wouldn't see her again. And in the back of his mind, Perfect Chaos whispered about justice.  
Knuckles wanted to punch something, just to relieve the pressure of his thoughts and the voices. Below it all, where he didn't want to think about it, lurked Chaos's demand. It was like the shadow of death hanging over him.  
"No," he told himself. "Nobody will die. We'll find out what Chaos really wants, make a deal with him, and he'll leave."  
His words sounded hollow, even to himself. Behind him, in the stairway, the wisp made a questioning noise. It followed him everywhere, even though he tried to leave it shut up in his quarters.  
"I wasn't talking to you," he muttered.  
When he reached the hanger on the bottom floor, a huge door stood open at one end, admitting gusts of warm wind and a fine view of Bygone Island in the distance. This must be the door that Ramussan had sent Metal Sonic to investigate.  
It was a long way down, and the idea of falling out made Knuckles slightly sick. Instead, he took the access hall and arrived at the ARK cannon.  
It had changed a lot. The floor glowed a warm yellow now, the glass clean and polished. The walls featured clean, new circuitry with gleaming copper and lead. Tails perched on a ledge fifty feet overhead, reaching behind a huge mirror-like panel that stood out from the wall at an angle. A swarm of Eggman's repurposed robots climbed all over the walls as far up as Knuckles could see.  
"Wow!" Knuckles said. "It looks better!"  
Tails glanced down at him and grinned. "It's eighty percent fixed already!"  
Knuckles beckoned to him. Tails flew down, his tails spinning like helicopter rotors. "What's up?"  
"NME's robots will arrive tonight," Knuckles told him. "Behind them is a bigger wave, due here the day after tomorrow. Then the NME ship will arrive that night."  
Tails considered this soberly, gazing at the gleaming metal surfaces around them. "That means I'll have to start charging the cannon tomorrow. While I'm working on it."  
Knuckles glanced at the glowing lens below their feet. "Looks like you already are."  
"Not this," Tails said, tapping a toe on it. "This is the focusing lens for the plasma. All I did was direct low voltage to the power coils. It makes enough light that I can see to work."  
Knuckles didn't question this. "How many times can this thing fire once it's charged?"  
"It can fire several weak bursts," Tails replied, "or one strong burst. That's what Ramussan claims, anyway."  
"Right. Depending on how strong their ship is, we might have to save the cannon's strong burst for that."  
"Oh ..." Tails's ears flattened. "And one thing I forgot to mention."  
"Yes?"  
"It uses seawater as coolant." When this failed to inspire the correct amount of dismay, Tails explained, "We have to land the island in the sea in order to use the ARK cannon."  
"Oh. That might be bad," Knuckles said, mentally avoiding the monster's whispers. "There's a water monster down there who wants to kill us."  
They considered this awful idea. The shadow of death crept closer in Knuckles's mind, looming bigger and darker. If NME proved to be the terrible threat he expected, and their ship so powerful that it sent Eggman running ... He would have to face Chaos. Otherwise, the island would be under attack from both the sea and the sky.  
He drew a deep breath, trying to steady himself. "We'll have to figure out how to land the island. Ramussan, can we fly it places?"  
"Of course," the AI replied in his headset. "The navigation tools are in the main computer."  
"We might move it further from Bygone," Tails suggested. "That way, NME won't hurt anything when they show up."  
And maybe they could escape Chaos. But Knuckles tried not to feel too hopeful. The monster wasn't stupid. It would follow them wherever they went.  
"I'll go check it out," Knuckles said. "It'll be tricky, because if we land in the wrong place, we could sink the island."  
Ramussan said, with exaggerated patience, "The navigation tools were designed to keep that from happening, sir."  
Knuckles began the long hike back to the first floor. On the way, he met the wisp, which flew to his shoulder and hitched a ride. He absently patted its head.  
Blast, he missed Gladiolus already. She was so different, so cheerful, despite her illness. She always drew him out of these black moods by talking about living things-the life in the forests, the secrets buried under the islands, simple village life. And she was dying.  
"I'm going to save her," Knuckles thought. "I'll find a cure for that chaos eye." Then the thought of Chaos's demand for a sacrifice rose in his mind like a brick wall. Mentally he punched through it. There had to be another way. He wasn't going to die to that monster. There was too much to do-and people depended on him.

* * *

When Gladiolus's mother opened the door and found Glad standing there in a crowd of wisps, she screamed.  
Glad hurried through the wisps and hugged her mother. Her mother hugged her back in a way that suggested she was using Glad as a shield. "Where have you been?" she cried in Glad's ear. "What are these things?"  
"It's okay!" Glad stage-whispered, glancing around to make sure Poppy's hysteria hadn't attracted any attention. Their shack sat back from the others in their neighborhood, but the neighbors would still hear raised voices. "They're called wisps, Mom. They're harmless. Can they come in?"  
Poppy's eyes flicked around the group of colored creatures as if she expected attack at any moment. "Can you put them in the yard?"  
Glad beckoned to the wisps and led them to the side yard's gate. She opened it and let them swarm inside. Then she and her mother went indoors.  
"Gladiolus!" her aunt Hyacinth exclaimed from where she occupied the only comfortable chair-she was too fat for the others. "Where have you been?"  
"She was at the door," Poppy said, "with this mass of colored demons around her!"  
As usual, they spoke to each other as if Glad was a baby who couldn't speak for herself. They had done it all her life and Glad had been used to it. But now, after being around people who spoke to her directly, it struck her as rude.  
"They're called wisps," Glad broke in. "They're friendly and good."  
Poppy leaned against the kitchen counter and folded her arms. Her pinched, worried face had a sickly look that Glad had never noticed before. Did she, herself, look so unhealthy?  
"Explain," her mother said in a dangerous voice. "You disappeared yesterday and never came home last night. We've been worried sick!"  
"Have you seen that island floating in the sky?" Glad said. "I went there. By accident. It took a while to get back."  
Poppy and Hyacinth exchanged glances. Hyacinth said, "Angel Island. It was on the news."  
Poppy gave a single, unfunny laugh. "You're saying you went there? You expect us to believe that?"  
"I did," Gladiolus said, her temper rising toward the danger point. It was not often that she wasn't believed. "This black hedgehog named Shadow used chaos control and took me along by accident."  
Hyacinth made a huffing sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "Shadow the Hedgehog? You would be dead, Glad. Shadow's a vicious recluse who lives in the jungle. Chaos power would pop your eye like a grape."  
"It did hurt," Glad admitted, trying to keep her voice even, "but it wasn't that bad. I met Sonic the Hedgehog and his friends there. Angel Island has a whole underground palace."  
With each word, Poppy and Hyacinth looked more and more incredulous. Finally Poppy held up one hand. "No more, young lady. I'm tired of the lies."  
"It's not lies!" Glad exclaimed. "I was on Angel Island! Shadow brought me back with chaos control just a while ago!"  
"If that's so," Hyacinth said, "then her eye will be worse."  
Poppy nodded, walked up to Glad, and motioned. "Take off the eyepatch."  
Glad pulled it off and glared at her mother with both eyes. After being around Mobians full of chaos power, it was a shock to see that her mother had none. She was invisible to Glad's chaos eye.  
Poppy leaned into Glad's face and studied her eye. At first she frowned, then she raised her eyebrows and looked confused. "It actually looks ... better, Hyacinth. The inflammation is way down."  
"Their robot healed me," Glad said.  
Poppy snorted and withdrew. "Show your aunt."  
Glad stepped to Hyacinth's chair and stooped, gazing into her aunt's pudgy face. Her aunt studied her with a cynical look. "It might be better. Or it might be a new stage right before it gets worse. Put the patch back on."  
Glad started to obey, then noticed that the patch was crusted with dried tears and blood. She took it to the sink to wash it.  
"So," her mother said behind her, "where were you, really?"  
Glad's mind pinwheeled. She had told them the truth. They didn't believe her. She could spin them a story they'd believe, but it would be a lie. Glad hated lying-too many loose ends. She thought of Knuckles's kind voice, the way they had laughed together, sitting on the edge of the ravine outside the palace. She hadn't mentioned him to her mother and aunt. They would assume the worst, the way they always did.  
Another thought came to her-Maria's earnest blue eyes, full of power, as she asked, "What was your father's name?"  
Glad gathered her nerve and turned to face her mother, securing the damp eyepatch to her face. "I'll tell you if you answer a question."  
"I'm asking the questions right now," Poppy snapped, one fist on her hip.  
Glad asked it anyway. "How did you meet Dad?"  
There was a stunned silence. Glad had the impression that question had somehow sucked all the anger out of the room, leaving only fear. Poppy looked at Hyacinth, eyes wide. "Why-why do you ask that?"  
"They knew him," Glad replied. "Shadow and Maria. They didn't want me to know."  
There was another pause. Her mother and aunt exchanged terrified glances.  
"I met him in the jungle one day," Poppy said slowly, as if measuring each word. "He was hurt. I nursed him back to health."  
A simple explanation that told Glad nothing. "How would Shadow know him, then?" Glad challenged.  
"He couldn't," Poppy said, barely moving her lips.  
Hyacinth heaved herself out of her chair. She barreled into the kitchen and loomed over Gladiolus like a tidal wave. "I'm sick of your attitude, child. Go out back while we discuss what to do with you."  
Glad stormed out the back door and slammed it behind her. She was met by eight wisps, who gazed up at her and made questioning sounds.  
"Nothing is wrong," she snapped at them.  
The wisps looked incredulous.  
Gladiolus picked her way through them, trying to control her rage. They didn't believe her, then they all but lied to her about her father. What was going on? How has life changed so much in two days?  
Glad went to the mango tree, peeled a mango, and held it out to the wisps. They clustered around it. No mouths appeared, but somehow, bites disappeared out of the fruit. She tossed it to them and peeled another. It felt good to vent her frustration on the fruit's tough skin.  
"I want to go back," she whispered to the wisps. "They tell me the truth on Angel Island. They don't think I'm lying."  
Sonic was coming to pick up the wisps that evening. She'd pack a few things, meet him on the beach, and ask him to take her back. Simple.  
She fed mangos to the wisps until they refused to eat anymore. Glad sat on the grass and let them pile all over her. They flopped on her lap, shoulders and head, making shrill groaning sounds, blinking their red eyes.  
"You're too easily satisfied," she told them. "A couple of mangos and now I'm your favorite person?"  
The triangle wisp looked at her, purred, and closed its eyes again.  
Glad sat there for a long time, watching the sun climb toward noon, listening to the birds calling and breathing the warm sea breeze. The wisps snored shrilly. Glad had time to wonder what her punishment would be, and whether she would put up with it. This was a new, daring thought. She was twenty-two. She was an adult, and yet she was awaiting punishment like a child.  
"What was my crime?" she thought. "I told the truth and they didn't believe me."  
Justice. She was being punished unjustly. Sympathy rose in her heart for Perfect Chaos, who considered himself unjustly punished. But who had the authority to grant either of them justice? Perfect Chaos was a water god. Who could deal justice to the gods?  
"Fith," she murmured, "give me wisdom on this."  
No divine answer came. After a while the back door opened. Her mother came out, alone, looking over her shoulder as she closed the door softly behind her. She crossed the yard to where Gladiolus sat with the wisps. The wisps woke up and gazed at Poppy curiously.  
"I had to wait until your aunt went to work," Poppy said, halting a safe distance away. "You can come in now. The time has come to explain about your father."

* * *

Two and a half days away, the Fellstorm roared over the ocean like a winged whale, trailing black smoke in its wake. Ahead of it flew robots in two waves. The first wave, the one within six hours of Angel Island, were sleek, fast battle drones. They had taken Eggman's mantis design and upgraded it into bladed, swift-moving machines of death. Matte-black, they flew as if hungry for blood.  
Behind them came the slower drilling robots. Heavily armored and carrying few weapons, their job was to excavate target locations as quickly as possible while the mantises shielded them.  
Behind them flew the Fellstorm, a mobile robot army, carrying its web of living minds and their lust for power. They called to Maria, they called to Chaos, over and over.  
/You belong with us. We are one. We are coming.  
Maria refused to answer. She moved about the island palace in short teleports, laying spells like land mines, lacing the walls and floors with threads like tripwires. She could reach into NME's power web and discern their plans, but they would also snare her like a fly in a cobweb.  
Every so often she appeared wherever Knuckles happened to be. She smiled and laid a hand on his shoulder. Chaos power swirled between them both, energizing her and rejuvenating him. Then she would vanish again.  
When Sonic chaos-controlled a vast load of groceries into the galley, Knuckles joined him, Amy, and Sticks in unpacking them.  
"I don't think Maria is human anymore," Knuckles remarked.  
Amy tried to lift a fifty pound bag of flour. Knuckles did it for her. Wiping her forehead, she said, "I don't think she was human even before they plugged her into the Master Emerald."  
"Yeah," Sonic said, opening a box of rice and beans. "When I was looking up Calamity stuff for Ramussan, I found these articles about a secret research lab under Bygone. It was from some government agency called GUN. Apparently, whatever happened down there was so bad that their whole department was shut down."  
Sticks looked up from stacking cans of tuna. "I always knew there were evil government agencies watching us. Now I know why."  
"They were shut down fifty years ago, Sticks," Sonic said. "Sticking Maria with the Master Emerald must have been the last thing they did."  
Knuckles thought about the wind swirling through the hanger before the door had been open. "I think I finally know how they got her inside."  
He explained about the broken place somewhere in the hanger that he still hadn't found. "I think Metal Sonic found it, though. He opened the hanger doors."  
"Well, he'd better close them," Amy snapped. "The NME robots will be here in a few hours. We don't need them walking straight in our back door."  
"Yeah, yeah," Knuckles said. "That's not the point. How did these GUN people know about the Master Emerald?"  
There was a sober silence. Everyone exchanged looks.  
"Ancient writings?" Sonic suggested.  
"Whoever it was," Knuckles said, "I don't think they lived long after they dropped Maria off. The Master Emerald practically had to drag me here to rescue her."  
"Maybe people knew it existed," Amy said, "but they didn't know where it was."  
"Until now," Knuckles grunted, hoisting a box of dehydrated soup.  
They worked in silence until the supplies were put away. Then Sonic said, "Oh yeah, I talked to Gladiolus. She found a whole gang of wisps. I'm going to teleport them all here this evening."  
Knuckles carefully kept his face neutral, trying to hide the way his heart jolted at Glad's name. "Wisps, eh?"  
"What's so special about them?" Sonic asked. "I mean, they're just these weird little squid things."  
"They ... well, they kind of change you around," Knuckles said, at a loss as to how to describe it. "They have this power called hyper-go-on."  
Sonic raised an eyebrow. "Hyper? Go on."  
Knuckles swiped at him, and Sonic dodged. "I don't understand it. Ask Maria. She knows all about it."  
"What do you mean, they change you around?" Sonic said, perching on the stone table. "They make you stronger?"  
"One turned me into a lightning bolt, kind of," Knuckles said.  
Sonic, Amy, and Sticks stared at Knuckles.  
"Dude," Sonic said, spines bristling with excitement. "Do you realize that we could use stuff like that to fight NME?"  
Knuckles felt immensely dumb for not realizing this. He forced a grin. "That's why I keep you around, Sonic. Good ideas."


	8. Chapter 8

Gladiolus sat at a tiny wooden table with her mother, chin on one hand, listening avidly.  
"Your father was born and raised in a laboratory," Poppy told her. "Apparently some government had a lab below Bygone. Amaryllis was one of many experiments. You inherited your unusual dreadlocks from him."  
Glad touched her hair. It connected her with her father? A thrill went through her. "I wish I could remember him better. All I remember is his voice, and him tossing me to the ceiling."  
Poppy smiled fondly. "He loved you very much. But he was never very strong. They had done such awful things to him before he escaped. He died when you were three."  
Sadness and loss welled up in Glad's heart, like a swelling, painful void. "But why? Why did they hurt him?"  
Poppy sighed. "He was an experiment. Apparently, the scientists were human and didn't consider their Mobian subjects to be people. Just dumb animals. They were trying to breed weapons."  
"Weapons!" Glad exclaimed.  
Poppy nodded. "The Ancients commanded immense chaos power. Much of that ability has been lost since the Calamity, when most of that race were destroyed, or intermarried with weaker tribes. But the people they bred in that lab ..." Poppy shook her head. "I told you that I found Amaryllis in the jungle. He was in a crowd of injured Mobians, all different species, who were dragging themselves out of a camouflaged door in the ground. That black hedgehog, Shadow, was helping them escape. The whole lab had been flooded."  
Flooded! Glad again saw those water tendrils coiling about themselves, trying to reach Angel Island. Knuckles had said that the water monster Chaos had been down there. It was too easy to imagine those same water tendrils creeping through dark hallways, curling around someone's ankle, and then-  
"The wisps came with them," Poppy went on. "A few. You know they sink into your body? It seemed not to hurt Mobians. At least, the wisp came out afterward. But it didn't work for humans. The scientists came out all misshapen and wrong, and died quickly." Her mouth twisted. "When I learned what those same scientists had done to all those people, I wished they had suffered longer."  
Glad stared at her mother. She had never seen her look so vindictive. "It must have been really bad."  
"Two months," Poppy said. "It took me two months to remove all the needles from under your father's skin. They had broken off and been left there."  
"Oh." Glad didn't know what to say. A faint inkling of her father's suffering began to dawn on her at last.  
"It took him a year to grow strong enough to find work," Poppy continued. "He wouldn't marry me until he could support me. He was honorable that way. He knew so little of the world, but he had watched enough TV and read enough books that he had an idea of how things worked. He was so kind and gentle. But he never could recover from the things he suffered."  
Glad bowed her head. "I wish I could remember him better."  
Poppy reached out and stroked the long, stiff dreadlocks in the back of Glad's head. "The genetic changes passed on, you know. Your father could use his hair like a hanglider."  
Glad's hands flew to her hair. All those dreams of flying! "You mean-I could, too?"  
"Maybe. With practice. But with only one eye, how will you have any depth perception?"  
Glad pulled her elbows inside her long dreadlocks and spread them out, imagining the wind under them. Her whole being ached to try it immediately. "Shadow said that chaos eye is a curse," she said absently.  
Poppy rocked back in her chair, alarmed. "A curse?"  
"From that chaos crystal. But he didn't say who laid it or how to break it."  
Poppy gave a hollow laugh. "It's not a curse. There's no such thing."  
Glad shrugged. She wasn't sure she believed it, either. "That's what he said."  
"The doctor said that it's a rare effect of chaos power," Poppy said. "He's read of other echidnas who carry the sickness in a hand or a knee. It's hardly a curse."  
Confronted with such cold facts, Gladiolus's trust in Shadow wavered. So did her desire to return to Angel Island. Her life was here-even if it was small and dull. And she had less than two years of it. Besides, Angel Island was about to fight a war. Knuckles had been right to want her out of harm's way.  
Gladiolus jumped to her feet. "I'm going to see if the library has a book about hang gliding."

* * *

"Could you show me how to chaos control?" Knuckles said.  
Sonic had come down to the Master Emerald's chamber to pick up the chaos emerald. Knuckles was waiting for him, sitting beside the Master Emerald with the chaos emerald in one hand.  
Sonic took the chaos emerald and tossed it from hand to hand. "What, you don't feel like having Shadow kick you around and call you names?"  
Knuckles tried to hide a grin, but it appeared anyway. "He kicked you around. He'd murder me outright."  
"Since he already tried to, once."  
"Yeah, that."  
There was an awkward silence. Sonic broke it by tossing the emerald in the air and catching it. "First, can you do Maria's meditation thing?"  
Knuckles nodded. "Easy. I have to do it to use the Master Emerald."  
"Awesome. So, all you do is connect that part of you to the chaos emerald and think about where you want to be. Blam." Sonic teleported to the bottom of the stairs and struck a pose.  
"Doesn't look hard. Toss it." Sonic threw the emerald to Knuckles, who caught it.  
Knuckles had always been susceptible to the power of this emerald. It had taken over his mind at one point, forcing him to find Angel Island. As he held it, it's power lapped him like low-level electricity, seeming to throb in his hands.  
"I never liked you," he said to it.  
"Knux!" Sonic mock-gasped. "After all these years?"  
"Shut up," Knuckles replied. "I hate this emerald. Okay. Bottom of the stairs. And ... chaos control!"  
"Wait," Sonic said, but he was too late. Knuckles shimmered out of his place, reappeared in midair fifteen feet away, and dropped to the marble floor with a thud.  
"You have to compensate for altitude," Sonic told him.  
Knuckles lay there groaning. "Thanks for mentioning it."  
Sonic plucked the emerald out of his hand. "I do need to go meet Gladiolus and get the wisps. Want to come? Or is the floor too comfortable?"  
Knuckles climbed to his feet, rubbing his lower back. "I'm fine, I'm fine. I wanted to save you the trip, but I can ride along."  
"Newb," Sonic chortled. He laid a hand on Knuckles shoulder and drew a deep breath, centering himself. After a moment of focus, he said, "Chaos control."  
The world blurred around them, as if they were traveling at light speed, passing through all walls between them and their destination. Knuckles glimpsed bright lights-people?-as they sped by. Sonic himself was a vivid blue blur, the green chaos emerald blazing in his hand like a smear of flame.  
His feet struck gravel. The blurred world settled into the eastern side of Bygone Island, all blue shadows as the sun sank behind the trees to the west. Fresh sea air filled his lungs.  
The beach was deserted. Sonic turned in a circle, scanning their surroundings. "Nobody here. I told her to meet me."  
"Maybe she's not here yet," Knuckles said, his heart sinking a little. "Maybe the wisps were being a pain."  
Sonic walked up the shore a little way. Knuckles followed him, trying not to feel excited and anxious about seeing Glad again. What if he had intimidated her too much? He had been pretty overbearing before she told him about Shadow saving her.  
A chorus of shrill chirping sounded from further up the beach. Glad's silhouette appeared from behind a rock, her long dreadlocks flying around her like a cape. Knuckles relaxed. She had come after all. Around her were the wisps who had followed them out of the underground lab.  
Sonic knelt and stroked the creatures as they crowded around him. "Hey, these are all different. What do they do?"  
"I don't know," Gladiolus said. "They ate about ten pounds of mangos, though." She pushed back her hair and caught sight of Knuckles. She stood there, one hand in her hair, watching him approach, smiling.  
Knuckles walked up, wearing a similar smile. "Hey, Glad."  
There must have been something different in his voice, because Sonic's head jerked up. He looked at Knuckles, then Gladiolus. He began to grin.  
"How're you?" Knuckles said, still in that odd, soft tone.  
"Fine," Glad replied.  
Sonic guffawed and covered his mouth.  
Knuckles shot him a glare. "Yes?"  
Sonic held up a hand. "Nothing! I'll take the wisps and come back for you later." Choking back laughter, he gathered the wisps around his feet and vanished in a sparkle of green light.  
"So rude," Knuckles said. "Are you all right?" He looked at her eyepatch.  
Glad self-consciously adjusted the strap. "It's been a lot better since Mecha healed it. Not gone, but less painful."  
"Good. Want to sit for a while?"  
They climbed a boulder and sat on top, watching the waves roll in and break on the rocks. Angel Island floated in the distance, gilded with orange and rose from the sunset, its swath of clouds somber purple.  
"Chaos must have gotten tired," Glad observed. "He was stretching water bits up, trying to reach the island."  
A cold dread crept through Knuckles's middle. This wasn't what he had wanted to hear. "Where is he now?"  
Glad closed her good eye for a moment. "He's just sitting in the ocean under the island. I can see his aura."  
"I'm going to have to confront him." Knuckles told her about the ARK cannon using seawater as coolant. It was pleasant to tell an outsider about his problems-pleasant because she was sympathetic. Despite his worries, peace stole through him.  
Gladiolus listened in silence. When he finished, she didn't speak for a while. Instead, she took his hand and laced her fingers through his. He clasped her hand, so tiny against his own, yet strong from a hard life of digging for scrap.  
"Don't let him kill you," she said in a small voice.  
Knuckles couldn't answer. Chaos wanted to kill him. He couldn't promise that he could talk the monster out of it.  
"My mom told me a secret," Glad said. "If I tell you, keep it to yourself, okay?"  
"Okay." Another secret to add to his growing list. Knuckles suppressed a sigh.  
"My father was from the same lab as Shadow."  
That was the last thing he expected her to say. Knuckles straightened. "What?"  
Gladiolus told him the story. Knuckles listened, horrified. Shadow's words echoed through his mind: "We were the specimen." Without meaning to, he studied Glad's strange, stiff dreadlocks-the result of genetic tampering. If NME wanted Maria, what would they do if they found out about Gladiolus?  
"So, there you have it," she said lightly. "I'm the child of a science-created monster."  
Knuckles squeezed her hand. His heart ached with grief for her, her father, their tiny, struggling family. "I'll never tell anyone."  
She smiled sadly. "The chaos eye will kill me in a few more years, anyway. Then, I suppose you can tell whoever you want."  
The grief grew stronger inside him, mingling with anger. "No."  
She cocked her head like a bird. "No?"  
"You're not going to die from this. I'm going to figure out how to cure it."  
"Shadow said that it's a curse," Gladiolus said. "But I don't know how to find out more. He didn't seem to want to talk about it."  
"A curse!" Knuckles exclaimed. "That doesn't make sense. You got it from chaos crystal."  
She nodded. "That's what Mom said."  
"Lyric was almost dead from over-using chaos power," Knuckles said. "That's what it does."  
She looked at their interlaced fingers. "It doesn't effect you, though."  
Knuckles considered. The Master Emerald calmed him and Maria constantly tapped him for strength. He had experienced no degradation from any of it. In fact, he felt better than he had in his life.  
"I'm going to find out," Knuckles said. "I'll break the curse, no matter what it takes."  
She tightened her hold on his hand. "If it takes blood sacrifice, don't do it. I'm not worth it."  
"Yes you are." Knuckles put an arm around her thin shoulders. "You came to us for a reason. You're in the same boat as Shadow and Maria. I couldn't abandon them, either."  
Glad looked at him with a mischievous smile. "Even Shadow?"  
"Well ..." Knuckles growled in frustration. "No, not even him."  
They sat in silence for a moment. The sun had set now. The sky was a deepening blue with a scattering of stars in it.  
"NME's robots arrive at midnight," Knuckles muttered.  
Glad didn't answer, but she tensed.  
"We'll handle them, don't worry," Knuckles assured her. "The big ship will be here in two days. That's what I'm worried about."  
"Chaos," Glad whispered. "I'd talk to him myself, if I could."  
His arm tightened around her. "Don't you dare."  
"I'm as good as dead, Knuckles. If anyone has to go to Chaos, it ought to be me."  
"Chaos is my responsibility," Knuckles said. "You have nothing to do with him."  
She pulled away from him, her good eye flashing. "He appeared to me in the Master Emerald."  
"That doesn't mean anything," Knuckles snapped, although he was horribly afraid that she was right.  
Glad opened her mouth to argue, but a flash of light interrupted her. Sonic had returned, a dark blue shape with a glowing green stone in one hand.  
"Hey there, lovebirds," he said. "The robots are getting close. We've got to get ready."  
Knuckles started to climb off the rock, but paused and looked at Glad, who wore a stormy expression. "Promise me you won't go near Chaos."  
She folded her arms and glared at him. After a second, she looked down. "I promise."  
Sonic stepped forward. "Hey, bad guys will be arriving for the next few days. Can you alert Pilings? Have them be ready to evacuate?"  
Glad's glare was replaced by a strained, worried expression. "I ... I can try. Where should they go?"  
"North," Sonic said, pointing up the coast. "As far from the fighting as you can."  
Glad nodded once.  
Sonic laid a hand on Knuckles's shoulder and said, "Chaos control!"  
Knuckles kept his eyes on Glad as they went. It seemed to him that as the world blurred, she did, too, her outer form giving way to an inner being of soft orange light, like a shaded lamp in a window.  
Then they were back in the emerald chamber on Angel Island. Sonic stepped away, grinning. "Somebody's got a crush!"  
"Shut up," Knuckles snapped. "It's not like that."  
"Oh, it's not? You two were sure cuddled together on that rock."  
Knuckles's face grew hot. "Blast it, Sonic, I'm trying to help her. She told me that her eye is a curse, not a disease."  
Sonic's smile vanished. "A curse? What the heckberries?"  
"She said Shadow told her," Knuckles said. "I need to talk to him."  
Sonic pointed eastward. "He's out in the woods, waiting for the robots. Ram's got them on radar."  
Knuckles grabbed his headset off the pyramid's stairs and dashed out the door. Sonic followed.

* * *

Shadow was hidden in the trees, watching the darkening sky for enemies. His black fur blended into the darkness. As long as he stayed calm, his red stripes wouldn't glow and give him away. So he sat there, breathing deeply, focused, alert.  
He had finally accepted one of their stupid headsets. They would be fighting robots in the dark, in the jungle. If they didn't want to kill each other, they had to communicate. Shadow may have preferred solitude, but he was also practical.  
Ramussan periodically spoke into all their headset. His latest message was, "ETA: thirty minutes. Seventy robots identified in first wave."  
"What type are they?" Sonic said.  
"My scans aren't detailed enough to tell. They're larger than a Mobian, but smaller than a vehicle."  
Shadow said nothing. He was both scornful of his companions' fear, and secretly, anxious about Maria. NME was coming to capture her. He was her protector, and the only one of these jokers with any real fighting experience.  
As he waited in the darkness, trusting to his insect repellent to protect him from the mosquitos, Knuckles messaged him privately, outside the open channel. "Shadow. I know you're out here. I need to talk to you."  
Shadow didn't answer. The moron probably wanted to punch him for leaving him in the ruins before the robots distracted him. Delayed punishment or something.  
Footsteps crunched in the leaves a short distance away. Knuckles was staying in the shadows, too, moving warily. All Mobians had varying degrees of night vision. Darkness meant caution, not the utter blindness it held for humans.  
"Shadow," Knuckles said again. Shadow heard him over the headset and also in the distance. "I need to ask you about Gladiolus's curse."  
Oh. That was different from handing out a pummeling. Shadow relaxed a little. "I would explain it, but your mind is too simple to grasp it."  
Knuckles turned and picked his way toward him, pulling off his headset. Shadow did the same. They didn't need Ramussan listening in and tattling later.  
Although Shadow seriously doubted the echidna's cognitive capabilities, he felt sorry for Gladiolus, child of an experiment, cursed without understanding the reason.  
"I'll only tell you because Gladiolus deserves a better fate," Shadow said as Knuckles stepped under his tree. "Not because I owe you anything."  
"All you owe me is an apology," Knuckles said in a low voice.  
Shadow snorted. "I'm sorry. There. That good enough?"  
Knuckles gave him a flat look. "That's the best I'm likely to get from you. So. What about this curse?"  
Shadow smiled. "Once upon a time ..."  
"Oh, not this again," Knuckles groaned.  
Shadow talked over him. "... there was a king who commanded the sea to smite his enemies. However, he couldn't command the sea directly. He had to issue orders to the sea's handlers. Now, the sea was friends with the wind. They had always lived in harmony. The handlers forced the sea to attack the wind. However unwillingly, the sea struck the wind a mortal blow and killed her. The land and fire rose up in fury, joining the wizards in fighting the sea."  
"That's not what you said last time," Knuckles interrupted.  
Shadow held up a finger for silence. "The sea, grieved to madness by what he had done, turned against his handlers and destroyed them. Then he sought out the king who had sought to control him. When he could not kill the king directly, he laid a blood curse upon him and his descendants. If any of them touched chaos crystal, they would gain immense power that would rot them from the inside. The king, who sat upon a throne of chaos crystal, was dead within weeks."  
Knuckles was silent, head bowed. Shadow let him process it. Hopefully the idiot would understand the story this time.  
"So," Knuckles said slowly, "she's descended from that King Solaris?"  
"Her father was a direct descendant," Shadow said. "They bred him in that lab from a male and female who were pure Ancient. But they altered him, trying to create a weapon."  
"Glad told me that much," Knuckles said. He rubbed his forehead. "How can you break a blood curse?"  
"Chaos only knows," Shadow said. "He laid it."  
It was a simple observation, but Knuckles reeled as if Shadow had punched him. He leaned against the tree for support, breathing heavily. "Chaos only knows," he gasped. "Of course Chaos only knows."  
"Heart attack?" Shadow suggested.  
Knuckles looked at him, his eyes wide and haunted. "You've told me all I need."  
He stumbled away into the forest, groping from tree to tree like a blind man. Shadow watched him go, frowning. What was eating the echidna? He put on his headset again and paged Maria.  
"Yes, dear?" her sweet voice said in his ear.  
"Knuckles asked about Gladiolus's curse," Shadow said quietly. "I told him the story. He freaked out. I'm watching him and he can barely even walk."  
Maria didn't answer for a long moment. Then she said, "Perhaps it was a shock."  
"Pretty bad shock."  
Maria drew a short, anxious breath. "Oh my. Has Chaos been speaking to him?"  
"I wouldn't know," Shadow said.  
"Watch him, Shadow. Don't let him out of your sight. Chaos's whispers are insidious. He may try to draw Knuckles to him."  
Shadow groaned inwardly. "All right, love. I'll do it for you."  
Ramussan's voice cut across their conversation. "Robots incoming. East side. They've broken into three V formations and are preparing to land."  
Shadow broke into a run, teeth clenched. Battle time.

* * *

Knuckles had forgotten about the headset in his hand. His head was awhirl with Shadow's story. A blood curse. Only Chaos knew how to break it.  
Chaos had accidentally killed the air elemental. Everyone turned against him, even though it hadn't been his fault. He was punished and imprisoned while King Solaris, the real murderer, walked free. So - curse.  
Now Chaos wanted to kill someone, preferably someone connected to his punishment. He probably wanted Gladiolus, but in a pinch, he would take Knuckles.  
"Am I descended from that line?" Knuckles whispered to the jungle night. It had been three hundred years-he might have any mix of bloodlines. Yet no curse had fallen upon him.  
He would have to go to Chaos and ask him about the curse. Maybe Knuckles could arrange to break the curse somehow, even if the monster killed him anyway. The whole world seemed to tilt and pitch, spinning away into the void.  
He came to on the ground, although he didn't remember falling. Strange rustlings and clanking filled the woods. The headset under his hand was filled with the yells of his friends. Clumsily he sat up and put it on.  
Sonic was yelling, "Their heads are weak, but you have to disarm their shields! Watch out!"  
"On it," Amy said. "Where's Knuckles? The third squad is going to flank us!"  
Knuckles blinked the fear-fog from his vision. The rustling noise was an army of robots walking through the trees in a line. They were hard to see-probably painted black-but they were insectoid. Knuckles knew where bugs kept their heads.  
He shoved aside the Chaos thing to deal with later. He crouched, watching the robots march by. Then he crept after them, falling in at the back of the line. The nearest robot was only a little taller than he was. Built like a praying mantis, its forelegs were reinforced steel plates that it could use to shield itself from attack. Two laser rifles lay on either side of its abdomen, ready to swing into action and fire from under the belly. But the back was completely unprotected.  
Knuckles knocked the head off in one punch. It bounced away into the brush, sparks flying from severed wires. The body went haywire, flailing around before falling over. One claw slashed Knuckles's forearm, opening a precise cut an inch long.  
Swallowing a swear word, Knuckles ran at the next robot in line, which had slowed and was turning to look back. He punched half its face off and left the rest a shattered mess. Before that robot hit the ground, he was dealing with a third.  
He progressed through ten of the twenty-three before the rest realized they were under attack. Then they whirled to face him, shields up, trying to surround him. Laser bolts flashed through the woods, impacting on tree trunks in explosions of red flame.  
"A little help, guys," Knuckles said into his headset, ducking behind a boulder. "Third squad noticed I was picking them off."  
"Hey, good to hear from you, Knux!" Sonic said. "We've got our hands full. Metal Sonic, go help Knux!"  
"Affirmative," the robot's voice replied.  
The mantises were closing in on Knuckles's hiding place. He ran for another tree, bent double. Hot blasts flashed by his head as he dove into cover.  
"Alert," Ramussan said in his headset. "Another incoming wave detected. ETA: fifteen minutes."  
"Not more of them?" Amy exclaimed.  
"It's the aliens this time," Sticks said.  
Knuckles sucked the bleeding cut on his arm and listened to the approaching robots, estimating when to move. At least he had remembered to grab his enerbeam bracelet. He fingered the button and listened to the mantises.  
When one reached his tree, he leaped out, lassoed the mantis's shield arm with the enerbeam, yanked the robot off its feet, and flung it into its oncoming companions.  
A robot head rolled out of the brush and stopped at Knuckles's feet. Metal Sonic stepped after it, his glowing red eyes demonic in the darkness. "That was the one you missed."  
"Thanks, Mecha."  
It was a delight to have Metal Sonic fighting at his side. The robot moved with the precision of a dancer, all of his movements so perfect as to seem choreographed. He ducked behind robots' shields, ignoring the heads, and tore open their bellies with his metal fingers. He wrenched off their legs, or snapped guns off their mounts and forced the robot to shoot itself. He was beautifully creative. Knuckles could have watched him fight all night.  
Between them, the robot and echidna destroyed the rest of that squad and ran to help their friends with the other two.  
Knuckles was so busy with the mantis robots, he completely forgot about the next wave of robots. He was ducking around two mantises who were standing back to back, when Shadow spoke over the headset for the first time. "New robots, morons. And they're drilling."  
"Drilling!" everyone exclaimed.  
"Trying to get to our base, I think. Come help me!"  
Abandoning the mantises was a mistake. As soon as the group rushed the drilling robots, the mantises opened their wings and took to the sky. They flew to the drilling robots and took up defensive stances.  
The battle would have been a lot harder if not for Shadow. As each worm-shaped robot drilled into the earth, he crawled into the hole after it, grabbed its tail, and chaos controlled it back to his companions, who destroyed it.  
They fought robots until dawn lit the sky. Finally, all were destroyed. The team dragged back to the palace, ate a little food, and went to bed-even Shadow.  
But the robots had accomplished their objective. Rouge the Bat hung upside down from a support beam in the weight room's darkest corner, awaiting the arrival of her team.


	9. Chapter 9

Gladiolus pressed the heel of her hand to her chaos eye. It ached in the sharp morning wind. She stood on a little bluff a short walk outside of Pilings. In the distance, a group of people-the town's mayor, the police chief, and other leaders-clustered together, talking and pointing.  
Chaos was reaching for Angel Island again. Water rose in crazy spirals, flowing up and up until gravity overcame them and they crashed back into the sea. It was unnatural and terrifying.  
Glad had spread the word about having to evacuate, though it cost her a heavy toll in fear. Her mother had trained her to avoid all these people in the village. Even as she knocked on doors and waited in offices, her mother's voice whispered in her head, "Don't draw attention. Don't make them notice you."  
But Sonic had told her to warn the village to evacuate. It looked like Pilings's leaders were taking it very seriously. Chaos's threat was plain to see. If he could propel heavy seawater almost a mile in the air, he could sweep Pilings away without effort.  
Glad picked her way along the top of the bluff until a bend hid her from Pilings's view. Then she faced the wind, letting it lift her dreadlocks. She had often felt this strange, floating feeling on windy days, when her dreadlocks caught the air just right. She was meant for flight-or at least gliding.  
She grabbed her outermost dreadlocks in either hand, ran forward and jumped off the bluff.  
For a second, her strange hair filled with wind. It cupped the air like a single wing. But holding her dreadlocks in her hands left gaps, and she lost her balance in the air. Glad tumbled to the foot of the bluff and lay there, panting. But despite a few bruises, she was smiling. It had worked! She had felt it, just for a second-the sensation of the wind lifting her.  
She climbed back up the bluff to try again.

* * *

Sonic slowly surfaced from a deep, heavy sleep with the idea that someone had left a TV on. A tinny voice was talking and shouting in the distance.  
"Guys! Hey guys! Are any of you listening? Oh my gosh. I can't believe this. Wake up, you lazy slobs! You've been out for nine hours already!"  
Sonic's headset lay beside his pillow where he had dropped it after crashing in his bunk. Tails was asleep in the bunk across from him, his orange fur blackened with dirt and grease. The light coming through the six-foot-deep window was the gold color of afternoon.  
Sonic sat up and stretched. He felt rested, despite being up all night fighting. He wanted a shower and calories, preferably in as delicious a form as possible.  
Ramussan continued to shout in his headset. Sonic took it out in the hall to avoid disturbing Tails. "What's up, Ram?"  
"Thank heaven one of you finally responded! The NME flagship is less than a day away. And I'm ninety-percent sure that we have an intruder."  
Sonic's stomach plunged like he had hit the first drop in a roller coaster. "A robot?"  
"No, it's that bat again. I know she's here, but she's keeping away from my sensors. I need you all to sweep the palace."  
Sonic groaned. "But I'm so hungry."  
"Then make a sandwich, dummy."  
Sonic went to the galley, yawning and annoyed. How did that bat get in? Where might she be hiding? He peeked into the pantry and various cabinets, just in case the bat was waiting to spring out at him. No intruders awaited him-only cases of food he had to tear open.  
He was layering ham, cheese, and pickles between slices of bread when Shadow walked in. The two hedgehogs exchanged wary looks. Then Sonic held up his mustard knife. "Want one?"  
Shadow looked nonplussed for a moment. "Um, sure." He went in the pantry and wrestled with the package of dried soup mixes.  
"Ramussan says that bat got in here," Sonic said.  
Shadow made a noise like, "Bah!"  
"He wants us to sweep the palace for her."  
Shadow reappeared with a stack of dried soup cups, which he set on the marble counter. "Enemies are a blasted nuisance. How do we heat water in this backwards place?"  
Sonic pointed at the huge iron kettle hanging from a crossbar in the fireplace.  
Shadow silently lugged the kettle to the sink, ran the pump to fill it with water, then hauled it back to the fireplace. He dragged a log out of the slot in the wall where Knuckles had stashed them. Setting it under the kettle, he lashed one hand at it and snarled, "Chaos spear!"  
Lightning flashed from his hand, crackling over the kettle, igniting the log to orange flame.  
Sonic jumped back and smacked into the opposite cabinet. "Geez! What the heck?"  
The black hedgehog calmly dusted his hands together. "That was another use for chaos power, imbecile. Pray I never use it on you."  
Sonic silently pointed to the completed sandwich. Shadow scooped it up and took a bite without a word of thanks.  
Sonic grabbed his own sandwich and left Shadow to babysit the hot water. He circulated through the palace, checking all the places he didn't want an intruder to be. Like the Master Emerald chamber. And the computer room. And the chaos reactor. And the ARK cannon.  
As he went, he tried not to think about Shadow throwing lightning into the fireplace. Chaos spear! There were more powers than just chaos control? What other crazy things could Shadow do? And with such a stinking superior attitude, what if he someday used those powers on Sonic and his friends?  
With these worries on his mind, Sonic stalked from floor to floor, checking every gloomy corner with paranoid attention. The bat had almost killed him once before. They needed to send Metal Sonic after her. The robot would hunt her down with all that fancy tracking hardware of his.  
He wound up inside the ARK cannon, gazing at the tiny spot of sky miles overhead. "Ramussan, could we fire this gun?"  
"Theoretically, yes," the AI replied. "The repairs are mostly complete. The diagnostics register it as battle ready, yet many parts are three centuries old. I fear that we may only have one shot."  
"One shot is all we need," Sonic said. "Any word on the bat?"  
"Not yet. The Ghost is offline for diagnostics, but he should be awake in twenty minutes." Ramussan must have been thinking along the same lines as Sonic.  
The blue hedgehog left the ARK cannon and roamed through the hanger's echoing spaces. "Ram, what used to be in here?"  
"Airships," Ramussan said sadly. "A whole fleet of them. All lost in the Calamity."  
Sonic stopped by the outer doors to make sure they were locked. The wall nearby had a broken place that had been filled with rocks. This must have been the hole that Knuckles was worried about. The whole hanger must have been underwater for ages.  
As Sonic began the trek back upstairs, he said, "What are our chances of surviving this, Ram?"  
"You destroyed the first wave of robots easily enough," Ramussan replied. "But the Fellstorm is carrying an army. You have the ARK cannon ... but I fear there are simply too few of you."  
"Not to mention Chaos trying to get us," Sonic said. "How can we fight a battle on two fronts?"  
"That is a question that has kept me awake nights," Ramussan replied.  
"I didn't know AIs slept."  
"It's an expression," Ramussan said acidly. "The battle between the three surviving elementals caused the Calamity. It was only ended when they trapped Chaos beneath Angel Island itself, which killed every last crew member. I was alone for centuries ... until Maria."  
"How does she talk to you, anyway?" Sonic said, taking a detour to check several empty rooms for marauding bats.  
"Through the Master Emerald, of course," Ramussan replied. "Honestly, Warrior, I thought you knew that."  
Sonic didn't say anything else. He was spinning through scenarios, trying to figure out how they might all survive.  
Fact: The Fellstorm could be destroyed by the ARK cannon.  
Fact: the ARK cannon needed seawater as coolant.  
Fact: Perfect Chaos awaited them in the sea.  
He twisted between these three facts, trying to figure out a way to bend things around. Make Chaos attack the Fellstorm? Lead Chaos away long enough for the cannon to fire? Endure a water attack and hope Chaos didn't feed himself into the cannon as coolant?  
Each scenario was worse than the others. By the time Sonic reached the first floor again, he was gloomily certain that they were doomed. Hopefully Gladiolus convinced Pilings to evacuate. Heck, Sonic should probably go back to Bygone and tell them to run for it, too.  
Everyone else was finally up, nervously milling around, eating sandwiches, and jumping at small noises. They combed the palace for the bat, but there was no sign of her.  
Sonic found Knuckles and told him his thoughts. "I think we're screwed no matter what we do, Knux. We've got the Fellstorm on one side and Chaos on the other."  
The big echidna folded his arms and didn't say anything, but his stance was aggressive, imposing.  
"You think we can take them?" Sonic said in surprise.  
Knuckles set his jaw. "When the Fellstorm arrives, Chaos won't be an issue."  
"What do you mean?" Sonic said.  
"Just what I said. I'll deal with him." Before Sonic could question this, Knuckles pointed toward the crew bunker, where the chattering of the wisps showed they were awake. "You guys are going to practice using the wisps. Maria says they're safe, and I trust her."  
Jittery excitement welled up inside Sonic like a fizzy soda. He danced in place. "Dude, I've wanted to try this ever since you mentioned what they do."  
"Tonight we practice," Knuckles said. "Tomorrow we fight." But for a second, his bravado slipped, and Sonic glimpsed the terror underneath.  
Sonic pretended he hadn't seen it. "Last one there is a rotten Eggman!"

* * *

Knuckles watched his friends play with the wisps. The wisps turned them into fireballs, rockets, and drills-all useful, destructive things that might give them an edge against NME.  
But he, himself, only watched it all, distant as if he was in another dimension. He was going to face Chaos tomorrow. Chaos would kill him. He held a faint hope that maybe a wisp existed that might let him breathe underwater, but no, they didn't seem to have that power.  
Knuckles couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. Late that night, after everyone had gone to bed, he stayed up, restlessly roaming the palace, ostensibly looking for the bat. In reality, he was sick with fear and grief. Why did this have to happen? Why was he being forced to sacrifice himself like this? It wasn't fair. Chaos was evil, forcing anyone into a situation like this.  
But justice must be done. Chaos had been wronged. Knuckles's death may not make it right, but he had to try. Maybe Chaos would reason with him before eating him.  
He wound up in the Master Emerald chamber, sitting with his back against the gem, wishing he could cry, but finding no tears inside himself. He was hard and dry, anguish cracking him like the sun on mud.  
Chaos whispered in his mind, "Give me justice ..."  
Knuckles growled. "Tomorrow, I'll come to you."  
"Tomorrow?" The monster sounded delighted. "You are preparing a sacrifice of the ones who wronged me?"  
"Yes." Knuckles's voice quivered. "Then you'll be free to go away."  
"I shall seek the deeps," Chaos crooned, sounding pacified already. "The cold depths where I am most at home."  
"Is that where you drop the bodies?" Knuckles growled. He was terrified to know the answer, yet he had to ask.  
Chaos made a horrible gurgling chuckle. "There is nothing left of those I consume."  
That was worse. Knuckles curled into a ball, shivering. He was hyper-aware of his own breathing, his beating heart-all signs of life. So easily extinguished.  
He forced himself to speak. "What deal has NME made with you?"  
"They promised me power and vengeance," Chaos said, sounding disinterested. "If you give me those who wronged me, I shall need neither."  
So there was another reason Knuckles had to do this. Chaos would side with NME otherwise.  
Chaos's presence withdrew. He seemed satisfied already, anticipating the taste of blood. Knuckles sat there for a long time, suffering. He didn't let himself think about Gladiolus. She was a better sacrifice than he was-but he was also trying to break her curse. He couldn't dither on this or Chaos would know. The blasted monster had figured out everything else.  
He awoke hours later, stiff and cramped, with a sore spot in his back from leaning against a pointed facet of the Master Emerald. Ramussan was talking in the headset he had taken off. He put it on.  
"I have a visual on the Fellstorm. ETA two hours. Battle stations, guys. This just got real."  
"I see it!" Sonic said. "It's so huge! I'll bet Eggman is jealous."  
"Remember," Tails said, "it has to be close in order to hit it with the ARK cannon. Distance decreases the blast's power." He sounded as excited as a kid on Christmas morning.  
"We have wisps now," Amy said. "We can take whatever they throw at us."  
Knuckles swallowed the dryness in his throat. "When does the island need to land, Tails?"  
"Soon," the fox replied. "I need to test the coolant system before firing."  
The fear rose to a sharp, painful heat between Knuckles's eyes. It was time, then. He stood up, his body feeling loose and light. He drifted down the altar's stairs and out of the chamber, headed for the control room without conscious thought. His brain had shut down. There was only duty and fear.  
Tails met him in the control room, decked out in goggles, a tool belt, and a handheld computer. "Hey there, Knuckles," he said cheerily. "Look at this program! We could move Angel Island anywhere. Once this is over, want to travel?"  
Knuckles nodded. His voice had fled. He gazed at the computer screens without seeing their contents.  
"I'll just put in the sea landing protocol," Tails said, tapping keys. "There. We're right above our starting point, so the island should be able to rest on the continental shelf."  
The fox might as well have been speaking Greek. Knuckles pointed his face at the screens and tried to look intelligent. The only thought in his mind was where to meet Chaos-on the cliff where the dock had been was probably best. The path was good and he could get there quickly.  
There was the slightest of sinking sensations as the island began to descend. Tails held on to a chair. Knuckles didn't. Chaos was waiting for him. He had to go. His heart stuttered in his chest and he drew a sharp breath.  
"It's okay," Tails said, misunderstanding. "Ram will set us down gently."  
"Steady as she goes," Ramussan said.  
Knuckles turned and walked out. He saw the palace in snapshots: the main hall, where Sonic, Amy and Sticks were arguing about wisps. The stairs. The entrance corridor. The sliding outer door. The warm, humid jungle.  
He was almost to the cliff at the island's edge, when Gladiolus whispered in his headset, "Please don't kill yourself."  
He halted in his headlong march. Her voice snapped him out of his trance. Knuckles found he was dizzy with hunger and thirst-he'd touched nothing since the day before. "Glad?"  
"I can see him waiting for you," she said, her voice crackling with static. She was barely within range, using the private channel he set for her. "Don't do it. Please."  
"I have to," he said, his voice unsteady. "He'll join NME if I don't."  
He walked to the edge of the cliffs. A mound of water rippled and shimmered half a mile below. The island descended slowly toward it. On Bygone Island, barely visible, was the red speck that was Gladiolus.  
"Chaos!" she shouted. "Here is your sacrifice!"  
"No!" Knuckles bellowed. "Don't you dare!"  
The water mound shifted, climbing upward, piling water upon water. It sculpted itself into the head of a dragon with the immense jaws of a moray eel. It was the size of a yacht, but Knuckles had the impression that it could be much, much bigger.  
The head turned from Knuckles, to Gladiolus, and back, like a dog offered two treats. "Two sacrifices?" Chaos said. "This is acceptable."  
"Only one!" Knuckles shouted. "Just me!"  
The dragon looked up at him as the island sank lower and lower. Its eyes were seaweed green, the pupils round and dark, like a squid's. The closer Knuckles came, the more he realized what he was doing. Why not just let it take Gladiolus? Why not run away and hide, never set foot near the ocean again?  
But that was cowardly. He had given his word, and this was to stop more lives being lost.  
"I will take you first, Guardian," Chaos crooned in his head. "You need not see her death."  
The island settled beneath him, touching down in the sea with a light shock. Now he was lower than Chaos, looking up at the huge, rippling head in the morning light. It was impossibly blue, turquoise at the edges, indigo in the middle. Could it really eat him? Did it have a stomach? It didn't seem to have any organs at all, aside from the suggestion of a brain between its eyes.  
Knuckles drew quick, panicked breaths, the floating feeling of unreality settling over him again. "I want to negotiate the outcome of this sacrifice," he heard himself say.  
In his headset, Ramussan said slowly, "What did you just say?"  
Chaos studied Knuckles, the huge head swinging closer. "I will hear your terms."  
Knuckles drew a deep breath, trying to speak without screaming. "Lift the blood curse from the line of Solaris."  
"Guardian, no!" Ramussan screamed. "Someone stop him! He's about to throw himself to Chaos!"  
His friends' voices broke into a panicked clamor. Knuckles ignored them. He gazed into the monster's nearest eye, which was focused on him intently.  
"Much depends on you," Chaos replied. "I will draw power from your death. If you contain enough, I can, perhaps, lift the curse. It was laid with the power of my beloved's death. Perhaps you can match that. Perhaps not."  
It was a good a bargain as he was likely to get. "And you'll keep your word?" Knuckles said, his voice faltering. Annihilation stared him in the face. His entire being wanted to turn and run for his life.  
"I can't find him!" Sonic was yelling. "Shadow, where is he?"  
The black hedgehog appeared on the path up the hill from Knuckles, a hand pressed to his headset. He and Knuckles exchanged a long look.  
"He's not at the dock," Shadow said coolly.  
Chaos lifted his head higher, stretching upward on a thick neck made of water. "I always keep my word."  
The huge head curved over Knuckles, the jaws opening. Teeth made of water lined the jaws, clear as icicles. Knuckles looked up into the maw, detached, terrified, and saw there was no throat. It was all just a shape made of water with no real body.  
Then the shape fell apart into a crashing waterfall. It struck Knuckles like a tidal wave, sweeping him off the rock and into the sea with the speed of a rip tide.  
Shadow watched. "We're too late," he said into the headset. "There was nothing I could do. Chaos took him."

* * *

On the NME flagship Fellstorm, Tasha Hunter, the blue tigress, doubled up and screamed. So did the red wolf Howell and the hyena Snicker. Their chaos web was being stretched like taffy. The monster Chaos, to whom they had attached their web, was pulling away with irresistible strength.  
"Chaos!" Tasha cried. "What are you doing?"  
"Our business is concluded," Chaos replied into all their minds. "The debt has been paid."  
"No, it can't!" wailed Howell. "Nobody could give him justice! I did the research! It's impossible!"  
"The debt has been paid," Chaos repeated. Like a cat walking through a cobweb, he simply tore out of their network and went away, leaving their chaos web in tattered rags.  
The three members of NME lay on the floor of the bridge, stunned and sore. In the distance, Rouge was also stunned in her hiding place.  
Tasha spoke to the ceiling through her teeth. "We may have lost Chaos. But we will still take the girl." She crawled to her feet and began weaving her web again-stronger than before, so tough that nobody would ever escape it again.

* * *

Maria staggered and fell. She lost track of where she was or what she was doing. Knuckles was being taken.  
Maria's connections were what kept her alive. Beyond her symbiotic connection with Shadow, she had formed another to Knuckles, who allowed her to form lesser connections to the others. They were her friends, her family, the reason she had any strength at all.  
But now, Knuckles was being taken by Chaos. His life wavered and dimmed, his green glow being drained away. Because of their connection, he drained away Maria's power, and Shadow's as well.  
The black hedgehog staggered to her and slumped against her, his breathing ragged. "What's happening?"  
"Chaos is seeking to consume Knuckles," Maria whispered. "But because we are connected, he will take all of us."  
Shadow groaned. "I could have saved him. I was right there."  
"Your petty jealousy may have slain us all," Maria breathed, screwing her eyes shut.  
Shadow drew a deep breath and took both her hands. "We can save him still."  
"How?" It was all Maria could do to hold herself back from that terrible pull, that endless inward draw of chaos power.  
"We shall pull him back," Shadow snarled. "We shall fight!"  
That dangerous red energy filled him, crackling across the red stripes in his black fur where powdered chaos crystal infused his skin. Instead of quelling it, Maria embraced it-Shadow's frustration, his jealousy, his scorn, every negative emotion he had brooded upon for fifty years.  
To it Maria added love-her adoration of Shadow, her devotion to goodness and peace, her fondness for Knuckles, and Sonic, and Amy, Tails, and Sticks. It rose in her like a wave of warmth, cresting and sparkling, mingling with the red of Shadow's wrath. Shadow gasped as it filled him. In an instant he truly understood how much Maria loved him, yet how she have love enough to share with the others.  
Chaos reached for their power, empty, starved for that kind of love, aching from the lack of it.  
Maria reached the other way, feeling for Knuckles's feeble spark of life in the midst of the monster.  
"You shall not have him!" Maria cried, dragging Knuckles out of Chaos's hungry essence.  
"He is my sacrifice," Chaos snarled, pulling back with all the power of the ocean.  
Knuckles hung in the middle, balanced between both powers, and that was when he awoke.


	10. Chapter 10

When the water crashed down on his head, shockingly cold and heavy, dragging him into the sea, Knuckles knew he was dead.  
He was sucked down and down into darkness until his ears popped from the pressure. Bubbles streamed from his mouth. Invisible currents swirled around him, filled with flashes of yellow, blue, hot pink. Was he seeing real light, or was he seeing things because he was drowning?  
Then something hit him. The pressure and the drowning stopped. A wisp! Had a wisp followed him down? His body changed, becoming pure energy, a different shape, glowing like the phosphorescence around him. He was no longer drowning because he didn't seem to have lungs anymore.  
For what seemed like a long time he simply drifted, existing, neither awake nor asleep. Power was being drawn through him and he was only a conduit, less important than his connection to greater powers.  
Suddenly he snapped awake. His mind engaged. "Am I dead?" He said it, or thought it, or something, because he didn't seem to have a mouth anymore, either. He just was.  
"Curse you," Chaos said, both inside his head and outside him, in the water. His voice was the sing-song moan of whale song. "Curse you and your ancestors, echidna. If only they had withered and died before giving rise to you."  
"Hey," Knuckles snapped, "that's uncalled for. You accepted me as your sacrifice. Am I dead or what?"  
"You are phased with my hyper-go-on," Chaos growled. "You are not of Solaris's line at all! You are one of the Angel Island wizards. Blast you."  
"What about Gladiolus?" Knuckles exclaimed. The glowing jellyfish thing that his body had become cycled through panicked yellow to cold blue. "If you've killed her, I'll gut you from the inside."  
"She lives." A huge bubble floated through Knuckles's range of vision. Gladiolus lay inside, eyes closed, breathing.  
"Why is she like that?" Knuckles said. He found that he could move, so he jetted after the bubble and stayed close beside it. The panic that had clouded his mind was gone. The dread that had saddled him for days was gone. He was relaxed, free, light as water in water. Whatever had happened to him, Chaos hadn't expected it and was unhappy about it.  
"She is sleeping while I examine her mind," Chaos said. "She is a descendant of Solaris, but she also bears the taint of the Others. While I would not turn away a sacrifice of a daughter of Solaris, she did it for you. I hate such devotion. It sours her in my mouth."  
Knuckles's heart, wherever it was, hurt him at this thought. She cared for him enough to throw herself in Chaos's way.  
"I wanted you, Guardian," Chaos muttered. "I could reach the chaos girl through you. But she is fighting back and I can hold only you."  
"Good for her!" Knuckles shouted into the sea. "Black his eye for me, Maria!"  
"You are a troublesome little beast," Chaos snarled. "Stuck in me like a thorn I cannot dislodge."  
"How do you have hyper-go-on?" Knuckles retorted. "What are you, a big, ugly, overgrown wisp that's too fat for the air to support?"  
"I am a metawisp," Chaos replied. "And watch your tongue or I'll tear it out."  
"I don't have one right now, I don't think," Knuckles said. "So what's a metawisp?"  
"I was one of the first," Chaos said. "I was birthed on another planet. But some of us set out to explore the universe. When we found Mobius, we thought we had stumbled upon paradise. As I was the eldest, I cared for the younger wisps, and I grew in proportion with my responsibility."  
"Weird," Knuckles said. He studied Gladiolus, floating on her back with the bubble curving over her. Her long, stiff dreadlocks spread beneath her in the water like a mermaid's hair.  
"What about her curse?" Knuckles said. "You were going to try to lift the blood curse."  
"You are not powerful enough," Chaos said. "The chaos girl would be, but I cannot take ahold of her. The curse lies upon thousands of echidnas, following families from generation to generation. It took tremendous power to lay such a curse, but it would take that power multiplied by a thousand to lift it."  
Knuckles gazed sorrowfully at Glad's eyepatch. "She came to you to save me, you rotten monster. Surely that means something."  
"It does," Chaos said grudgingly.  
"There's got to be something we can do!" Knuckles roared, swimming around and around Glad's bubble in his strange aquatic form.  
"I can do nothing," Chaos said. "But you are the Guardian, descended from the line of wizards. As much as I curse their names, they respected me, and I them."  
"So, tell me," Knuckles said. "What can I do?"  
"What is a blood curse?" Chaos countered.  
Knuckles considered. "It's a curse on a guy and his kids and their kids, right?"  
"A hereditary curse," Chaos replied. "Passed from one family to another through the male line. However, this Gladiolus is female."  
Knuckles tried to figure out where this was going. "So ... what, females are different under the curse?"  
"It can be broken if she enters another family," Chaos said. "Had I not added that condition, all echidnas would have shared the curse within a few generations. I was angry, not stupid."  
"Enters another family," Knuckles said, thinking of the Speaker and the island crew. "What, like through adoption?"  
"You will have to marry her, fool," Chaos snarled.  
"Marry her!" Knuckles flinched away from the bubble. "I barely know her!"  
"That's how the curse may be broken in the case of a female," Chaos growled. "Were she male, you could not lift it at all."  
Knuckles floated, reeling from this information, looking at Glad in her bubble because he couldn't see Chaos. Marry her!Wasn't he too young for marriage or something? What was being married even like? He tried to remember his own parents, but they had died when he was five, and his memories of them were blurry. Did the girl just come live in your house? That was how it looked on TV. How could he take care of her when he didn't technically have a job?  
As these concerns bounced through his mind, Chaos said, "I have taken you both as sacrifices, and I find that I don't want either of you. Justice is done, and it is bitter to me."  
"I can't say I'm too fond of it, either," Knuckles replied.  
The water around the echidnas shifted, swirling, growing lighter. Sunlight filtered down from the surface in long golden rays.  
"I will release you both," Chaos said, his voice a guttural rumble. "The Others are coming to steal what I could not. Once you have defeated them, throw their bodies in the sea and I will manage them."  
Before Knuckles could reply, he was thrust upward by a powerful current, as if a monstrous fin had swirled at him from below. He shot toward the surface, his jellyfish-body hardening back into his echidna body as he went.  
Knuckles burst from the water like a dolphin, crashed down on the bank he had left, and lay there, gasping for breath. By the dryness of the earth and the angle of the sun, they must have been down there for hours.  
Another splash drenched him, and Gladiolus landed beside him, coughing and wiping water out of her eyes. "What happened?"  
Knuckles found that he didn't want to tell her what Chaos said. He was violently embarrassed to even breathe a word of how the curse might be broken. So he said, "Chaos was willing to negotiate after all."  
They sat there for a moment, just breathing and staring at the rippling sea. Knuckles's whole body ached, as if he had swam a marathon.  
"Why didn't he kill us?" Gladiolus said softly. "When he grabbed me, I felt him tear open my mind. I sort of ... went to sleep. Then I woke up and here we are." She pressed a hand to her temple and closed her good eye.  
"He really only wanted Maria," Knuckles said. "He tried to use me to get to her. And since you were trying to save me, he didn't like your sacrifice, either."  
Gladiolus sat up straight, her eyes widening. "Did he hurt Maria?"  
"No, he said she was fighting back and he couldn't reach her."  
Glad gave him a fierce grin. "Good."  
They sat there a little longer. Knuckles chewed on the solution to her curse and marveled that she was sitting there at all.  
"You tried to save me," he said.  
Gladiolus nodded without looking at him.  
"Why?"  
She hunched her shoulders a little, as if trying to hide. "Oh, well, you know. You're not the one who's going to die soon. It seemed like such a waste for you to throw your life away."  
Knuckles nodded and gazed at the tranquil sea as it sparkled in the sun. He was almost-not quite-disappointed at this answer. It was a perfectly valid reason, of course. But if he was going to have to marry her to save her, it might help if she cared about him. Even if he married her to save her life, he couldn't look forward to a future stuck with someone who merely tolerated his existence. They could divorce, he supposed, but what was the point of getting married in the first place? And if he left her, wouldn't that place her back under the curse?  
He had a little time to win her affection. Maybe he would try, if she would let him.  
Gladiolus shielded her eyes from the glare of the sun on the water. "It must be past noon. Wasn't that bad ship supposed to arrive today?"  
The words triggered an avalanche of renewed worries in Knuckles's head. "Yeah. Oh crap." He ran up the path to the crest of the little hill and looked east, across Angel Island.  
The Fellstorm hung in the sky just off the island's coast. It was a long, whale-shaped airship with six sets of wings. The jets on the wings had been rotated downward, allowing the ship to hover. Smokestacks lined its back like spikes on the whale's spine, pumping out clouds of dirty black smoke.  
As he watched, there was an orange flash from a cannon array in the whale's nose. A few seconds later, the muted crack-boom of the cannon reached his ears.  
His headset was gone, and Glad's was waterlogged. He had no way to know what NME was targeting with guns that size, but they might be punching holes in the palace for all he knew.  
"Glad," he said, "we need to get under cover, like, right now."

* * *

When Chaos took Knuckles, his friends didn't know what to do. Amy burst into tears. Sticks patted her on the back with a strange expression, almost smiling.  
Sonic and Tails grabbed lightning wisps and blasted up the stairs and out of the palace, down to the shore where water still trickled off the rocks. But there was nothing there. The ocean lapped at the shore, glittering and blue under the clear sky.  
Sonic halted and the wisp released him, floating over his shoulder. "Knux," he whispered, "why did you do it?"  
Tails appeared beside him with his own wisp. "I don't know what to do, Sonic. Could we try to swim?"  
"I can't swim," Sonic said, voice cracking. He covered his eyes with one hand. "He's gone, Tails. He's gone."  
Tails bowed his head. They stood there like that, and if tears were shed, neither of them would ever mention it.  
After a while, Sonic said hoarsely, "What're we gonna do with no Guardian?"  
"I don't know," Tails whispered. "He had all the memories of this place. The traps and doors and stuff."  
"NME is almost here," Sonic said. He gave a short, ironic laugh. "Knux told me he was going to deal with Chaos. I didn't know he was going to-going to feed himself to him!" Suddenly enraged, Sonic picked up rocks and threw them at the water. "Blast you, Chaos! Come back and fight me! I'll teach you to bully people! Come on!"  
Nothing happened. The ocean remained calm and blue. No monsters stirred the water or shaped it into dragon heads.  
Sonic slumped onto the muddy bank and covered his face, spines drooping. Tails merely stood there, wiping his eyes over and over.  
In their headsets, Ramussan said quietly, "Only the greatest Guardians lay down their lives for their crew."  
"Shut up!" Sonic choked. "You should have warned us what he was going to do!"  
"I knew that Chaos wanted him," Ramussan said, sounding as grieved as Sonic. "He didn't tell me his plan. He didn't tell anyone."  
Tails said, thickly, "Sonic, don't try to one-up him when NME arrives."  
Sonic laughed, a painful half-sob. "I'm not suicidal, Tails. I'm not the Guardian who does stupid things like think he has to protect everybody." He pointed at the fox. "And don't you try it, either."  
Tails nodded. Then he sniffed and wiped his nose. "Don't make me promise, Sonic. If you were in trouble ..."  
Sonic dug his fingers into the damp earth. "Dammit. If you were in trouble ..." He beat his fist against the ground. "I did this. I told him we were screwed because we couldn't fight NME and Chaos at the same time. This is my fault. He must have thought this was the only way to save us." The blue hedgehog tilted his face to the sky, eyes closed, mouth twisted. "It's my fault."  
"The NME ship is nearly here," Ramussan said apologetically. "I have battle strategies planned, but they require the presence of certain wisps."  
Sonic nodded and climbed to his feet. The laser burn across his chest hadn't hurt as bad as his heart did right now. Yet he had to carry on, to finish the fight without his friend. "Come on, Tails. Let's end this."  
Back indoors, Amy met them at the foot of the stairs. She caught Sonic's hand and searched his face. "He's gone?"  
Sonic nodded grimly. "He's gone."  
Her face contorted, as if holding back tears. Then she pointed to the center of the main hall. "Look at them. Something's happening."  
Maria and Shadow sat on the floor, hands clasped, foreheads touching, eyes closed. Chaos power flickered around them like red fireflies, and Shadow's stripes glowed like neon.  
Sonic's heart hurt too bad to worry about things like personal space. He walked straight up to them and laid a hand on one of Shadow and Maria's hands.  
The world spun and darkened. Sonic stood on the horizon of a vast world he didn't understand, full of bright lights and deep shadows. Maria and Shadow burned like a pyre, red and gold. Arranged against them was a huge, ferocious blue thing that dragged and clawed at them, ripping away fragments of their power. Deep in its heart burned two bright sparks-a green one and an orange one.  
Then Sonic hit the floor, smashing his nose on the marble, and let go of Shadow and Maria. The world snapped back to normal. Maria didn't acknowledge Sonic's presence, but Shadow said without stirring, "Do that again and I'll kill you myself."  
Tails helped Sonic up. Sonic pinched his nose and looked around wildly, trying to determine where the blue monster was. "I think Knux is alive. Maria and Shadow are fighting Chaos for him."  
Tails looked at the motionless pair doubtfully. "They are?"  
"Yeah, and we can't let NME distract them." It was a slim, fragile hope, but Sonic was going to hang on to it with every ounce of strength he possessed. Maniac energy flooded him. "Tails! Get the ARK cannon ready! Amy, Sticks, go get the robot dragons. Metal Sonic! Guard these two! We've got a crapton of robots to fight!"  
Everyone scattered except Metal Sonic. The blue robot walked up to stand beside Maria. He gave Sonic a nod. In his headset, the robot's text-to-speech voice said, "Nothing shall harm them."  
"Good." Sonic sprinted for the crowd of wisps. "Ramussan, which ones?"  
"Red, yellow, orange, and pink. And a white one, if there's any."  
Sonic repeated this. The wisps in question floated up to hover around his head and shoulders, making happy trilling sounds. "I'm keeping the lightning one, too," Sonic said.  
"Good," Ramussan replied. "There is a cave in a hillside where I want you to hide as they approach. I've been scanning the Fellstorm, and this will be a desperate fight."  
Sonic ran for the stairs. "You want me to hide? I've got wisps! I can probably tear right through that ship!"  
"You have to lure it in," Ramussan retorted. "It's going to try to shell from a distance, and I can't let our Warrior get blown to bits in the first five minutes."  
This was a sobering thought. As Sonic bounded out into the hot, green jungle, he said, "You're telling Amy and Sticks to hide, too, right?"  
"They're your rearguard," Ramussan replied. "Fith! I don't know how we can do this with only three of you. I need Shadow and Metal Sonic to help fight, too."  
"But they have to protect Maria! The bat's still in there!" Sonic was running through the trees now, his voice uneven.  
Ramussan muttered, as if to himself, "Oh Guardian, why must you abandon us now?" Louder, he said, "You're approaching the hill with the cave. Bear left."  
Sonic couldn't see through the dense trees, but he felt the ground sloping upward. He tore through brush and vines and climbed to where the vegetation was thinner. The wisps floated in his wake, strung out in a line, looking as if moving this quickly was taxing their floating power.  
As Sonic emerged, he stopped to stare for a moment. The Fellstorm was closer now, filling the sky with its shadow. It was bigger than he had thought. It was like a flying skyscraper. He had trouble understanding its scale because of the distance and its size. His brain simply couldn't grasp it.  
"Ram," Sonic said faintly, "exactly how big is that ship?"  
"I estimate that it is thirteen hundred feet long," Ramussan replied. "About a quarter of a mile in length."  
Sonic whistled. "How does it fly?"  
"Once you destroy it, I'm certain the Mechanic will explain it. Now take cover before they mark you."  
The cave entrance wasn't easy to find. Sonic hunted up and down the hillside until one of the wisps whistled to him. They had found it, hidden behind waist-high grass. Sonic pushed through it and slipped inside.  
The cave looked as if it had once been a building, but the years had reduced the outside to a rubble-covered hill. The ceiling was uneven rock, but the floor was paved with cracked stone tiles under years of leaves and other debris. The wisps explored, chirping to each other. Sonic crouched at the entrance, watching the Fellstorm.  
"Now," Ramussan said, "once you begin using the wisps, you will not be able to wear the headset. I'll have to instruct you in advance."  
The Fellstorm's nose slid open, revealing a bristling array of cannon barrels. Sonic's ears flattened.  
"Destroy the advancing robots using the yellow, red, pink, and blue. When the Fellstorm is over the island, use the orange to board. You must carry the fight to NME themselves. Capture them or destroy them, if you must."  
"Yeah, that shouldn't be too hard," Sonic said.  
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the cannons flashed. A concussive BOOM hit him in the chest, and Sonic gasped. Across the island, dust exploded from the mountainside and a small landslide poured down. At the same time, a swarm of flying robots arose from the Fellstorm and descended toward the island's edge.  
"What was that?" Ramussan exclaimed.  
"They unloaded a ton of big guns at the mountain," Sonic replied. "And they're sending robots."  
Ramussan swore in some language that sounded as if it had been designed for it. "If they keep that up, they'll penetrate the palace within a few hours."  
"Time to go, then," Sonic said. "I'll come back and get the headset later."  
"Good luck, Warrior."  
Sonic changed channels to the public one. His friends' voices were nervous. "I'm starting my attack, guys. Are you ready?"  
"We've got the dragons, Sonic," Amy said. "I wish we had more than just three."  
"It'll have to do," Sonic said. "Use wisps if you need them."  
"Be careful, Sonic," Amy said softly.  
For some reason, a lump formed in Sonic's throat. Maybe it was because of losing one of his friends-he couldn't bear to think of the others being hurt. "You too," he managed to say.  
"Sonic," Sticks said, sounding breathless, "those NME people are crazy and probably using alien technology. Don't go to their ship unless you take Shadow. He's part of their alien organization."  
"Uh, thanks, Sticks," Sonic said. "I'm going dark now." He pulled off the headset and hid it behind a rock near the cave entrance. "Shadow's part of their alien organization? What the heck, Sticks?" He motioned to the wisps, who surrounded him. "Stay close, guys. This might get a little rough."  
The wisps trilled their agreement.  
Sonic touched the blue wisp. It dove into him, disappearing into his chest like a drop of water into sand. Sonic changed into a zigzag of blue lightning. He flashed out of the cave and down the hill, back under the cover of the trees.  
The cannons boomed again. The battle had begun.

* * *

Amy and Sticks marched into the trees, trailed by wisps and three robot dragons the size of elephants. Each dragon had a short neck, a bulky, powerful body, and serrated jaws like can openers. Their bodies were gleaming bronze, and ancient machinery thrummed inside them, powering their hydraulics and simple intelligence.  
"There's so many robots," Amy said, pausing to peer through a break in the trees. Clouds of robots were leaving the Fellstorm in waves, shimmering like grass in a high wind. The ship itself floated in their midst, somehow smug.  
Amy felt very small all of a sudden. She reached for Sticks's hand for reassurance. Sticks took her hand and gulped. "That's more than Eggman ever used."  
Amy lifted her hammer in her other hand, hefting its reassuring weight. "We'll just fight them as they come. And remember the mantises-don't let them get behind you."  
"We need to pick good places to fight where that can't happen," Sticks said. She glanced around at the trees, her brown badger face cunning. "I know. Let's go down by the canyon. If the robots follow it, we can ambush them."  
"What canyon?" Amy said.  
Sticks took off without a word, trailed by her wisps. Amy sighed and followed. "Ramussan, can you control the dragons?"  
Ramussan didn't reply for a moment. Then he said, "Oh. Oh yes, I can." He followed this with his best approximation of an evil laugh.  
"I suppose I should be glad you're on our side," Amy said, as the three dragons lifted their heads and began to move with intent, pausing and sweeping the trees with their glowing turquoise eyes.  
"Be very glad," Ramussan said. "Especially now that I'm driving these babies."  
The girls hiked through the jungle for a couple of miles, jumping every time the cannons fired and struck the mountain to their left. Sometimes a dragon would take the lead and smash through the brush, creating a trail like a bulldozer.  
Before they reached Sticks's canyon, they met a squadron of attack robots. These were designed like ants, five feet long, with sharp mandibles and lasers mounted on their abdomens.  
Amy attacked with her hammer, venting her feelings about losing Knuckles by beating the ants into scrap. She smashed others with a fury she wouldn't admit to the source of-the deep, appalling fear that Sonic wouldn't come back, either.  
The robot dragons pounced and chewed ants in half, seeming to enjoy it far too much. Or maybe it was only Ramussan reveling in destruction.  
Either way, by the time they reached the canyon's edge, they had demolished an entire wave of robot ants. Amy stopped to catch her breath, gazing down the canyon. It was more of a ravine, twenty feet deep, with a muddy river in the bottom. Most of it was overhung with trees, making it a convenient way to sneak through the jungle quickly.  
A mass of robots were coming up it toward them. Some were long-legged roaches that strode through the water itself. Plenty more were wasps, or quick, nasty flies, or beetles carrying explosives.  
Sticks hefted her boomerang. "Fish in a barrel."  
Amy gestured to the pink wisp. "They'll never know what hit them."

* * *

When Chaos finally released Knuckles and Gladiolus, Maria slowly keeled over sideways on the floor. Shadow barely had the strength to catch her-both of them were exhausted and weak.  
Metal Sonic knelt beside them, his glowing red eyes somehow anxious. He laid a hand on each of their arms and tried to heal, but nothing happened.  
"We're just tired out," Shadow said, too weary to be nasty about it. "You can't heal that."  
Metal Sonic withdrew a few paces, but watched over them warily.  
Shadow slid to Maria and bent over her. "You do have limits after all."  
"I tend to forget how long I was in suspension," she murmured, eyes closed. "I need to go to the Master Emerald."  
Shadow thought of the long staircase down, and the long climb up the altar. He groaned. "I don't think I can." Chaos control was out of the question, too.  
Metal Sonic stepped forward, offering a hand.  
Maria turned her head a little and looked at the robot. "Mecha will help us."  
Despite his small, light build, the robot was strong. Supporting them on either arm, Metal Sonic slowly escorted them downstairs and into the Master Emerald's chamber. They crawled up the altar, and Maria simply flung herself across the great gem's top. She sighed in bliss like a cat that had found a sunbeam.  
Shadow placed both hands on the emerald and felt its power swirling into him, refreshing him. It felt so much like Maria, he couldn't tell them apart when his eyes were closed.  
Maybe Knuckles couldn't, either. When this was over, maybe Shadow could hash things out with the echidna. At the very least, they could declare a truce.  
The floor vibrated as the Fellstorm's bombing hit a little too close to the palace's walls. Metal Sonic, standing on the altar steps, scanned the walls and ceiling.  
"Why hasn't that stopped?" Shadow growled. As his energy came back, so did his frustration at the ineptitude of those around him.  
Maria, eyes still closed, said, "The Fellstorm is inaccessible at the moment. They are trying to draw it in, but they are outnumbered a thousand to one."  
Shadow trembled. NME might actually win this fight. They might kill everyone, capture the island, and take Maria. It was too easy to imagine himself, restrained, screaming her name as they stripped away Maria's power, her soul, her life, until there was nothing left but dust.  
"I'll have to help," he said faintly.  
Maria opened her blue eyes, which currently glowed green as the emerald. "Yes. But don't let Tasha Hunter catch you."


	11. Chapter 11

Tails crouched over a dusty control console in the dark, chewing the end of one tail as he listened to everything on his headset. Two locked vault doors stood between him and the ARK cannon now-it was charging quickly, and it was too dangerous to go inside. Even through the doors and insulated walls, he felt the growing heat of the charging plasma coils. The seawater coolant system was working beautifully.  
"Charge is at fifty percent and rising," he told his friends.  
"The Fellstorm is still miles away!" Amy panted. There was a crash of her hammer on metal. "How strong is the ARK cannon, anyway?"  
Tails looked at the readouts on his screen. "Uh ... pretty strong. This thing could probably blow up the moon."  
"If we could fire multiple times, yes," Ramussan corrected. "I'm already registering oscillation in the prisms that normally doesn't occur until after the six or seventh use. We may only get one shot, and maybe not even that."  
Tails wanted to ask who had fired the cannon that many times, and at what. Then he thought of the Calamity and swallowed. Instead, he cycled through the cannon's systems, checking to see if everything was working. Everything was in the green-except for one screen.  
"Ram," Tails said, "it says the focus crystal cannot be deployed. What's that mean?"  
Ramussan said something in another language that sounded dirty. "That's the bit at the top of the cannon that aims the blast. It's a big crystal that has to slide out the top of the mountain. All this shelling has cracked the rock and the crystal can't deploy."  
Tails's heart jolted. They needed this cannon to fire! Otherwise they had no way to stop the Fellstorm!  
"What if I climbed up there?" Tails said. "Maybe I could dig it out."  
"That's the only way to tell for sure what's wrong," Ramussan said. "But NME will see you. You'll become a target."  
"I don't care," Tails said fiercely. "I've got to try." He packed his tools into his belt and ran for the stairs.

* * *

Rouge the Bat stirred in her hiding place. The pain in her head from Chaos ruining the chaos web was finally abating. She slowly stood and stretched. She had moved from the weight room to a room full of noisy dynamos, rising from the floor like big domes with spinning wheels inside. Whenever someone came by to look for her, she simply circled the room, keeping the dynamos between herself and discovery.  
But now it was time to act. She wore a headset she had stolen from the island crew's supplies. Their chatter told her that everyone was out of the palace. The chaos girl remained inside, protected by one guard.  
Rouge checked her pistol with its silencer. That wouldn't work for the chaos girl, however. For her, Tasha and Regis had devised chaos-dampening bindings. They were nasty things, handcuffs with a crystal lining that hurt Rouge just to look at it. She also had a blowgun with tranquilizer darts. She loaded it with a dart, and carrying it carefully, she set out to find the chaos girl, Maria.  
She wasn't hard to find. All Rouge had to do was close her eyes and feel for the most intense center of chaos power, like locating the sun by the feel of its warmth. This sense led her down the stairs at the end of the main hall, through an antechamber filled with young chaos crystal, and to a set of huge doors with gold plates that could only be opened by island crew. The girl was behind them.  
Before Rouge could decide whether to wait for someone to open the doors or to blast them open herself, footsteps and voices sounded behind her, at the top of the stairs. She quickly hid behind the clusters of chaos crystal.  
It was the red echidna and a female companion, both dripping wet, but alive. Rouge frowned. The Guardian was supposed to be dead! Chaos had made all that fuss about accepting him as a sacrifice, yet here he was, disappointingly alive. She'd put a bullet in his head right now if she didn't need him to open the door.  
"They need our help," Knuckles was saying as he walked by. "I've just got to check in with Maria before I go. You stay here."  
The girl echidna hung her head, shivering in her wet clothes. "I wish I could fight."  
Knuckles touched the gold plate. The door swung open. "You don't have to be able to fight to be strong," he told her.  
The pair went inside. Rouge darted forward, caught the door before it could close, and held it open a crack.  
Inside was a small pyramid crowned by the biggest emerald she had ever seen. Rouge's heart spasmed at the sight. It was the size of a boulder and probably weighed at least a ton. The math ran through her head. If a carat was two percent of a gram, and there were four hundred and fifty-three grams to a pound ... that emerald was well over a million carats. There wasn't a currency number large enough to set a value on it.  
In that moment, Rouge mentally abandoned NME, her contract with Tasha, even her quest for the chaos girl. All she wanted was the big Emerald. Nothing else mattered. Yet-she shook herself. If she bailed on the mission now, Tasha would know. Better to finish, capture the girl, and so on-and claim the emerald as her pay. Yes, that would do nicely.  
The chaos girl was sitting at the emerald's foot. Harsh circles ringed her eyes, as if she hadn't slept in days. But she wore a delighted smile as she spoke with Knuckles. The echidna girl stood at the pyramid's foot with her back to Rouge, presenting an easy target. The girl had been an innocent bystander before, and Rouge hadn't wanted to leave a trail of bodies. Now, though, the girl had cast her lot in with these islanders. Her life was forfeit.  
As Rouge reached for her gun, a footstep scuffed on the other side of the door. The red-eyed robot who had harassed her in the jungle looked through the gap in the door at her.  
For a second Rouge stared into those camera-like eyes. Then she jerked backward, intending to close the door. The robot's arm shot through the gap and caught her wrist. With iron strength he dragged her inside the emerald chamber.  
Rouge drew her gun with her other hand, placed the muzzle against the robot's chest, and fired twice.  
Metal fragments exploded out of the robot's back. The red eyes flickered. For a second they stared at each other. Then the robot dropped to the floor like a broken toy, releasing her arm along the way.  
The noise had alerted the echidnas and the chaos girl. "Mecha!" Knuckles cried. He charged down the stairs, straight at Rouge.  
She tracked him with her pistol, aiming for that white crescent on his chest. When he was halfway down the stairs, she fired.  
Knuckles flinched, staggered, missed his footing, and rolled down the rest of the steps. He lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom.  
"Knuckles!" the females screamed.  
Rouge aimed at the echidna girl. The girl dove behind a corner of the pyramid, and the bullet merely chipped the stone. Keeping an eye on the spot, Rouge raced up the stairs two at a time, fluttering her wings for extra speed.  
The chaos girl, Maria, stood there with both hands over her mouth and tears in her eyes. As Rouge approached, Maria's hands dropped to her sides, clenched into fists. "How dare you!"  
Rouge pulled her blowgun out of her belt. She had to move quickly, before Maria could fight back or call for help. Rouge puffed the blowgun. The dart flew out and stuck in Maria's upper arm. Maria grabbed it and pulled it out, but the plunger had compressed on impact, delivering its payload of tranquilizer.  
Maria looked at the dart and threw it aside. Her pupils were already dilating from the drug. "Why must you do this?"  
"Because," Rouge said, whipping out the dampening handcuffs, "I'm being paid a lot of money for you. And luckily," she added, showing her pointed teeth in a smile, "I take my payment in gems." She tried not to let the giant emerald distract her with its alluring glow.  
She cuffed Maria's wrists. The girl gasped as they cut off her connection to her own power web. Tasha had been concerned about that-the girl's web was at least as powerful as their own. But now, the girl was isolated. Weakened both by the loss of her power and the drug, she sank to her knees, reaching for the big emerald with both hands.  
"Oh no you don't," Rouge said. She stooped, thrust her shoulder against the girl's stomach, and lifted her over her shoulder. It was a good thing this human was small-Rouge would need help to carry her any great distance.  
As the bat carried her prisoner down the stairs, she felt Maria go limp as the tranquilizer sapped her consciousness. Rouge walked by the motionless echidna at the foot of the steps and carried Maria into one of the antechambers outside. She was not climbing that outer staircase while lugging a body.  
She lowered Maria to the floor and checked her breathing. Slow and deep. Good. Rouge pulled out her communicator, which no longer needed the satellite connection to reach the Fellstorm. "Tasha, I've got the girl."  
Rouge accompanied this with a selfie that showed her own face with the unconscious Maria in the background.  
"Excellent!" Tasha squealed. "Give us another hour to break their paltry defense. We'll come find you when we take possession of Angel Island."  
"All right," Rouge said. "I think I killed the Guardian."  
"Even more excellent!" Tasha exclaimed. "Rouge, you can name your fee."  
Rouge mentally hugged herself. "I'll get back to you with the numbers."  
Tasha hung up. Rouge settled herself on the floor with her gun in her lap, ready to relax until NME triumphed.

* * *

Gladiolus hid behind the pyramid, fist crammed against her mouth to keep from sobbing aloud, watching the bat carry away the unconscious Maria.  
Her world was falling apart. Chaos had given up, but NME looked like they were going to win. And Knuckles ... poor Knuckles!  
As soon as the door closed behind the bat, Glad ran for him, scrambling on all fours around the corner of the pyramid. Knuckles lay on his side, head resting on one arm as if he was sleeping. But an ominous puddle of dark red was slowly spreading across the marble floor beneath him. Her chaos eye showed her that his aura still glowed, but it was weaker, with sick yellow edges.  
Somewhere inside her, a voice started screaming. It was the part of her that had been glad to see him on the beach, that had wanted Chaos to take her instead of him, that desperately wanted his approval.  
Glad pushed him onto his back and pressed her hands against the bullet hole. It was lower than she expected, below his rib cage on the right side. Lung, liver ... so many vital organs there. He drew a bubbling breath, as if his lungs were filling with fluid. She watched the blood welling through her fingers. It reminded her of the first time she had seen a wound like that-when Metal Sonic had healed Shadow of a similar injury from the same gun.  
Metal Sonic!  
The robot lay on the floor in the corner, his red eyes dark. Glad ran to him and shook him, trying to awaken him. She knew less about fixing robots than she did about injuries. "Mecha! Please wake up! I need your healing powers!"  
To her immense delight, the robot turned his head, his eyes flickering.  
"Knuckles is hurt," she said. "Can you heal him?"  
The robot made a tiny motion that might have been a nod.  
Glad still wore her headset, but being underwater had shorted it out. She pulled it off, shook water droplets out of it, and fiddled with the power. Nothing. She growled, stuck it back in her ear, and dragged Metal Sonic across the smooth floor to Knuckles. There she pressed the robot's yellow hand against the bullet hole.  
For a long, awful minute, nothing happened. Then the emerald-shape burned into the yellow paint began to glow a little. Glad exhaled and closed her eyes. "Thank you, thank you."  
She sat there a long time, watching Knuckles's face for signs of life. Metal Sonic seemed on the verge of shorting out. He couldn't seem to move, and his eyes flickered like a lightbulb in a storm. Without realizing it, Glad began talking to him.  
"I'm so sorry, Mecha," she murmured, looking at the uncomfortable way she was holding his arm out to reach Knuckles. "I know you're as hurt as he is, but ... I think they can fix you? Probably? But nobody could fix Knuckles. Even if we could get him to a hospital, there's only so much they can do with holes blown in people." She looked at the two holes punched in Metal Sonic's chest and cringed. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"  
No answer. He only spoke through the headset, didn't he? Gladiolus pulled it off and set it on the pyramid step. "I'm so useless. I can't even tell the others what's happening. They don't know that Maria's captured, or Knuckles is hurt, or Metal Sonic is damaged. But not Glad." Her voice took on a false cheerful tone. "Oh no, not Glad. She'd rather hide than get shot, too. Glad's a coward and that's why she's not hurt."  
Without moving or opening his eyes, Knuckles said, "Will you shut up already?"  
Glad flinched at the rebuke, but a shrill giggle burst from her anyway. "Fine way to tell me you're alive."  
He groaned and rolled his head to one side so he could rub the back. More red smeared his glove.  
"Oh no, your head!" Glad exclaimed. "I think Mecha can heal that, too."  
She started to move Mecha's hand, but Knuckles grabbed both their hands and kept them in place. "No. It's healing my head, too. Leave it."  
Glad looked at Knuckles's big mitt engulfing her tiny hand along with the robot's. Her heart fluttered. If only this meant that he maybe liked her a little. Shame at her warm feelings welled up and added another dimension to her discomfort. "I'm sorry," she whispered.  
"Stop apologizing," Knuckles said through his teeth. "Somebody had to survive this. If she'd shot you, too, we'd all be dead right now."  
"But she took Maria!" Glad wailed. "I just hid and let it happen!"  
"That bat would have killed you," Knuckles said. "They want Maria, remember? They'll keep her alive. We can rescue her." He released her hand and levered himself up on his elbows, wincing. "Remind me never to fall down these stairs again. That tore me up worse than the stupid bullet." He sat up and held Mecha's hand against his wound himself. He patted the robot's forehead. "Poor guy. He was just doing his job."  
The robot's eyes flicked on and for a second they gazed at each other. Then Knuckles looked at Glad. "He praises your quick thinking in getting him to me."  
Glad's face warmed. She looked down. "Will he be okay?"  
"Yeah," Knuckles said. "He says it damaged three parts, but those three are what allow him to walk, so he's down for now." He drew a deep breath, then coughed an alarming, wet-sounding cough.  
"What do we do?" Glad whispered, horrified.  
"First, I've gotta get patched up," Knuckles said, several shades paler than he had been a moment ago. "He's healing me really slowly. Then we need to figure out where that bat took Maria. We can't let her take her to the Fellstorm."

* * *

Sonic didn't mind being a fireball. In fact, it was downright fun, especially when the robots he was facing had extra fuel tanks on their backs.  
The wisps helped him take his fighting skills to a whole new level. When he was fire, he ignited robots' fuel and blew holes in the jungle. When he was a yellow drill, he tore through mantis shields and armor in an unstoppable swath. When he was lightning, even the fastest wasps couldn't catch him.  
Once in a while he used the lightning wisp to check in with Amy and Sticks. They were miles away, fighting robots that used the river canyon as a highway. Sometimes Sonic helped destroy the robots they were facing, other times he just dropped by to make sure they were okay.  
Over the course of the afternoon, Sonic punched holes in the oncoming army. Yet they pushed across the island in an ever widening wave. They also did disturbing things like dig into the earth and construct tunnels and trenches for cover. Sonic routed one team of robots that had found a cave and were converting it to a bunker. He had to use both the drill wisp and the fireball wisp to destroy them. Yet it worried him. How many more robots were digging in and creating fortifications that he hadn't found yet?  
He was also growing inexplicably tired. He didn't know it, but the moment Rouge snapped the dampening cuffs on Maria, Sonic and his friends were cut off from the Master Emerald's sustaining power. She had strengthened them, and now it had stopped.  
"I gotta take more vitamins or something," Sonic panted, leaning against a tree to rest. "Is that stupid ship here yet?" He used the lightning wisp to shoot to the top of the tree for a look.  
The Fellstorm loomed nearly overhead, blocking the sun, its engines a teeth-rattling hum. It was definitely over the island. It had also stopped shelling the central mountain, which Sonic found ominous. Was NME so certain of victory that they didn't feel the need to blast new doors in the palace? He missed Ramussan's inside information with a pang.  
So, it was time to use the rocket wisp to fly up to the Fellstorm. And Sticks said to take Shadow. Since Sticks had been made the island's Seer, he had an almost superstitious respect for her ramblings. Too many of them had turned out right.  
But where was Shadow? Sonic looked hopelessly across the jungle from his perch in the treetop, his wisps wearily clinging to his shoulders and spines. The black hedgehog could be anywhere. The whole eastern half of the island was crawling with robots. Despite Sonic's prodigious power, he couldn't stop their advance. All he had done was slow it down a little.  
"Knux, we need you back, buddy," he whispered. Then he cast a worried look at the central mountain. The ARK cannon would fire from up there somewhere, but without contact with his team, he had no idea when. He had to trust to Sticks's prophecy and try to halt the Fellstorm's advance as best as he could. Frustration tormented him. He'd never lost a battle with robots before. These robots weren't particularly tough. There were just too many of them.  
Suddenly, less than thirty feet away, something exploded. A cloud of smoke rolled upward through the trees.  
Now, that had to be Shadow. Sonic jumped to the ground and ran toward the explosion's source.  
Shadow was in the process of demolishing two mantises at once. His red stripes glowed like road flares as he raced around them, feinting and kicking. He actually blocked a blow from a razor sharp claw with one of the red stripes on his arms, which manifested an energy shield for a second.  
Sonic's respect for Shadow rose several levels.  
"Chaos spear!" Shadow snarled. He hurled lightning into the nearest robot's face, blowing off its head. The electricity fried its companion, too, and both robots collapsed.  
Sonic whistled and clapped. "Way to go, Shads!"  
The black hedgehog spun and glared at him. "What do you want?"  
Sonic pointed at the Fellstorm with a thumb. "I'm storming the castle. Want to come?"  
Shadow cast a hunted look at the ship overhead, which blocked the afternoon sky with its huge belly. He looked at Sonic, taking in his ragged spines, the wisps clinging to him instead of floating, the way the athletic tape hung off Sonic's limbs in tatters.  
"You don't stand a chance," Shadow said. "You're tired. NME will skin you and take the chaos power from your soul."  
Sonic started to laugh, then realized that Shadow had meant this literally. It felt like he had swallowed a block of ice. "Sticks said that I can't go without you."  
"Sticks is a loon," Shadow spat. But he gave the Fellstorm another cautious look, as if he expected it to fall on their heads. After a second he said, "All right. We'll take them together. This is for Maria's sake, not yours."  
Sonic nodded, taking the orange wisp and stroking it. It winked at him. "See you there, Shads."

* * *

Tails's arms and legs were so tired, he could barely haul himself up the final slope of Angel Island's central peak. The wind up here was fierce, alternately smashing him into the rocks and trying to snatch him off into space.  
A faint path wound most of the way up the mountain, but Ramussan assured him that the ARK cannon fired from the very top. So the young fox had to claw his way up the final quarter of a mile. Sometimes he was able to gain altitude by spinning his tails like helicopter rotors and flying, but as the wind increased, this became too dangerous. The tools in his belt seemed heavier and heavier. The breath caught in his chest. This mountain did not look this high. This was lame.  
But finally Tails reached a level place where there were no more hills above him. He stayed on his hands and knees to present a low profile to the wind. He'd put on his goggles hours ago, and now he blinked and caught his breath. He was on eye level with the Fellstorm. He had a dizzying view of its upper decks and the glass-lined bridge that formed a tower atop the whale head. It was moving slowly, leisurely, angling toward him and taking its time. It was the perfect shot.  
He crawled across the mountaintop, hoping he was too far away for NME to notice him. Right in the middle of the mountaintop, he came to a long, deep split in the stone. It was as long as the whole mountaintop. Peering inside, Tails found himself looking down the throat of the ARK cannon to the glowing lens in the very bottom. It was miles down. He gulped and backed away. This entire mountain was hollow. What crazy engineering technology the ancients must have had!  
As he crept along the length of the cannon's mouth, he found the focusing crystal that the computer couldn't deploy. Right in the center of the cannon was a honeycomb structure of some clear, glass-like material. It was laced around a glass ball the size of the Master Emerald, but clear as water. The glassy mechanism was full of dirt and cracked stone that jammed the joints. Tails pulled out a brush and began cleaning it.  
"The mechanism is dirty," Tails said into his headset. "I'm cleaning it out. How's the charge, Ram?"  
"Ready to fire," the AI replied. "Is the prism in good condition?"  
Tails eyed the giant ball. "Looks okay. No cracks."  
"I have the Fellstorm targeted. You'll have to tell me when you're clear."  
"Right." Tails kept working.

* * *

Sonic landed on the Fellstorm's upper deck, his rocket form giving way to his blue hedgehog body. Shadow appeared several feet away in a sparkle of red light.  
"Cheater," Sonic muttered.  
The deck of the Fellstorm had a low railing around it and stretched along the ship's entire length. Ladders and access ports stood every twenty feet. Recessed alcoves hosted machine guns, currently unmanned. There were several robot guards, who rushed them as soon as they landed.  
Shadow vanished. The robots fell and crashed to pieces. Shadow reappeared, sneering at Sonic. "You'll never master that, hedgehog."  
"I'll get it one of these days," Sonic jeered back. "Speaking of which, how many of these NME jokers do we have to take down?"  
"I have no idea," Shadow said, looking up the deck toward the bridge. "Let me check." He vanished. A second later he reappeared, panting, looking worried. "There's three Mobians in there. Two of them are the people in business suits who wanted to buy Maria from me."  
This memory made Sonic's stomach lurch unpleasantly. Of course they were the ones coming to take her. Why hadn't he thought of that? Maybe it was too strange to parse business suits with assassins and armies of vicious robots.  
"What should we do?" Sonic said. "I don't kill people."  
"They don't have to know that," Shadow said, showing too many teeth in a grin. "Let's go kick them around, disarm them, tie them up, whatever."  
Sonic tried to feel elated at this prospect. Instead, he felt ill. Smashing robots was one thing. He didn't want to think about what his wisp's drill form would do to a living person. He murmured for the wisps to wait for him outside. With nervous trills, they dropped off his shoulders and hid themselves wherever they could.  
Despite his misgivings, Sonic followed Shadow's lead into rushing the bridge and smashing in through the door. The blue tiger, red wolf, and hyena turned to look at them in surprise.  
"Nobody move," Shadow said. "We're-"  
All three of their enemies vanished. Sonic barely had time to see this before something hit him in the back of the head and the stomach at the same time. As he fell, something whipped around his feet and hands. He hit the floor stunned and tied. Nearby, the same thing happened to Shadow.  
Both hedgehogs lay on the floor, panting in shock and pain, staring at each other. The tiger, wolf, and hyena reappeared. "Well," said the blue tiger, sliding a ring onto her finger with a flashing yellow chaos crystal set in it. "It was a good try, boys." She stepped over Shadow, grabbed his jaw, and turned his face so their eyes met. The tiger smiled. "Why, hello, Shadow. So nice to see you again."  
Shadow jerked his head out of her grip. "I should have killed you, Tasha."  
Sonic watched this in horror. Sticks's words spun through his head. "Shadow is part of their alien organization ..."  
Smiling pleasantly, Tasha stepped over Shadow and gazed down at Sonic. Sonic stared back. Tasha's fur was perfectly groomed, her stripes trimmed to exactly accent her eyes. Only a hint of white hairs around her nose gave a clue as to her age-older than she seemed. Aside from that, and the chaos crystal rings on her fingers-Sonic counted six, one in each color-she looked like a normal person. Not an evil megalomaniac who had sent Eggman running in terror.  
"Hello, Sonic," Tasha said, equally pleasantly. "How nice to see you still alive. Rouge was supposed to have terminated you three days ago."  
This was so unexpected that Sonic blinked. How could someone talk about murder in such a neutral tone? His misgivings about breaking in here grew.  
Tasha stepped over him, too, and walked away as if they didn't matter. Sonic looked at Shadow, wide-eyed. Shadow shook his head slightly and whispered, "Shh."  
Don't say a word. Right. Sonic waited in silence. He glanced around the room, hoping for a weapon. But the walls were all glass. Beneath them were control consoles and screens displaying maps and reports from the robot army. There were several well-worn command chairs where each member of NME performed their duties. No weapons. But then, all three of them wore chaos crystal and had stopped the time the instant they were threatened. Conventional weapons no longer mattered to them.  
Across the room, Tasha said, "Hylee! What are their readings?"  
"Off the charts," said the hyena. "Shall I start the process?"  
"Not yet," said the red wolf. He walked over to the hedgehogs with a tablet computer. "Shadow's readings are significantly lower than they should be."  
"They're still at twelve hundred," the hyena said acidly. "That's more than high enough."  
"But he was triple that when Rouge encountered him on Bygone Island," the wolf said. "Shadow, are you perhaps not feeling well?"  
Shadow said nothing.  
The wolf suddenly grinned. "I know what it is. You're cut off from Maria."  
Shadow stiffened. Despite his warning not to speak, he said, "Ha. Maria and I can never be separated."  
"Really." The wolf nodded at Tasha. Tasha pressed a button. A wall-sized conference screen unfolded and lit up. It showed a picture of the bat taking a picture of herself. Maria lay in the background, handcuffed and unconscious.  
Shadow stared at the picture. His ears lay back. The red died out of his stripes, leaving them nearly as black as the rest of his spines. His eyes glazed. For a moment Sonic thought Shadow was having a heart attack of some kind.  
"No," Shadow breathed, but it was a defeated, despairing protest.  
"Our agent has already secured the chaos girl," Tasha said. "Without her, you are both weakened. Hadn't you missed your chaos web?"  
Sonic had no idea what she was talking about. But Shadow closed his eyes and let his head slump to the floor as if Tasha had kicked him.  
Tasha grinned. "One of them noticed, anyway. Perhaps the blue one wasn't so tightly enmeshed."  
Sonic couldn't hold his tongue any longer. "Enmeshed in what? This rope? Because I'm enmeshed in that really good."  
The red wolf, Regis, grinned and showed his teeth. "Maybe they were never told. It's not like the Specimen to share information freely."  
"Shadow's a specimen?" Sonic said, hoping his snark would jar the other hedgehog out of his stupor. "Is this, like, when you call somebody a fine specimen? Like you want to date him?"  
Tasha laughed, and for a split second she looked embarrassed. "While Shadow's quite a specimen, Sonic, that's not what I meant. He and Maria operate like a single organism. We designed them that way."  
Sonic raised an eyebrow to disguise the sinking of his heart. "We?"  
"I used to work for GUN in my post-graduate days," Tasha said. "Project Shadow was high-risk. After the shutdown, I never could figure out where they concealed Maria. I assumed she was dead. But now ..." Tasha made a complicated gesture, the crystals glowing in her rings. "She shall join us. We shall become one."  
Sonic carefully tugged at the ropes. All he needed was a wisp and he could escape. Shadow could chaos control. There was no reason to be stuck here.  
But Tasha stooped and laid a bejeweled hand on Sonic's head, between his ears. "But first, we will take care of this one."


	12. Chapter 12

Tails heaved at the crystalline framework around the ARK cannon's focusing prism. The joints shifted a little. "Ram, I think it'll move now."  
"Stand by," the AI replied.  
The machinery whined. The framework flexed up, then sagged downward, then flexed up again. This time it hoisted the glass sphere out of the crack in the mountain. It gleamed in the sun, holding an upside-down reflection of the world inside it.  
"It's deployed!" Tails exclaimed.  
"Fine-tuning the focus," Ramussan said.  
The ball turned back and forth, the framework lifting it up and down a little like a camera lens making fine adjustments.  
"Perfect," Ramussan said. "Tails, get out of there. You must not be on the mountain when the ARK cannon fires. There is a fifty-seven percent chance of catastrophic failure."  
Tails scrambled down the cliff, sliding where he could and helicoptering his tail like a parachute. The wind continued to buffet him, but he didn't care anymore. He had to get away.  
Halfway down, he panted, "I'm almost there, Ram. Fire when ready."  
"Firing sequence initiated," Ramussan replied. "You'd better not be lying, Tails. I have no way of confirming your position."  
"I'm miles away!" Tails exclaimed. "Blow up the Fellstorm for me!"  
"That's the plan," Ramussan said. "Standby. Three minutes and counting."

* * *

Sonic tried to twist out from under Tasha's hand, but she dug her claws into his scalp and he froze.  
"None of that," she said sharply. "Killing you would be so easy right now."  
Sonic opened his mouth to say that he'd taken out insects bigger than her, but the words got lost on the way to his mouth. The room was filled with ghostly strings. Multiple strings connected each person to each other. Other threads stretched through the walls and vanished into space. Each member of NME glowed with chaos power-red, orange, yellow. Like poisonous snakes.  
While none of them seemed to move, the threads crept toward Sonic and Shadow on their own. Slowly thread after thread wound itself around the hedgehogs, like a fly being wrapped by a hungry spider.  
Sonic couldn't feel the threads as they wound around him. But his senses dulled. Sounds lost their sharpness. Some of the color faded from the room. The ropes didn't bite his wrists and ankles quite as fiercely. The thought of using the wisps to escape became harder and harder to hold onto.  
"You belong to us now," Tasha whispered. "You will take your life's meaning from our commands. You do not feel anger. You do not feel love. You do not feel any emotion. You only tolerate. You will tolerate pain. You will tolerate injustice. You will tolerate suffering. None of it effects you."  
The world became gray as she spoke. Sonic struggled against it, fighting to remember his friends, his passions, the reason for his speed, his sense of humor, the wisps anxiously awaiting him outside.  
But somehow, everything was difficult now. Running. Escaping. Caring. All of it required too much effort.  
They wrapped his heart in layers of gray chaos web, cutting Sonic apart from himself. Nearby, Shadow kept fighting, but Sonic no longer cared. He didn't even care when they clubbed Shadow over the head to cow him.  
He didn't care when Tasha cut Sonic's ropes and helped him up. Standing, lying on the floor, none of it mattered.  
Distantly, he knew he was screaming at himself to run, to fight, to do something. But the threads kept winding in thicker and thicker layers.  
"Maria didn't guard him like she should have," the red wolf said, shining a light into each of Sonic's eyes. "We've assimilated him completely now."  
Tasha stepped in front of Sonic, beaming. "The apathy will wear off in a few days. Then you'll begin to see that you've found a much better place. NME has plenty of room for the powerful."  
Over her shoulder, Sonic could see Angel Island's central peak. An orb of light sat on its pinnacle like a dewdrop.  
He knew what it was, but they had taken away his ability to care. He knew he should run, but his feet were too heavy, too lazy, to move.  
"I'm going to die," he managed to say.  
Tasha laughed. "You won't die! In fact, you-"  
The orb brightened to the intensity of a sun. Sonic flinched.

* * *

The ARK cannon released the stored power from its coils, bounced it through its reflectors to concentrate the energy, then directed it through the glass sphere.  
Guided by electromagnetism, the beam shot southeastward, a blinding white ray that boiled the air as it passed, forming instant clouds. It struck the Fellstorm in the starboard side, shearing away an engine. It burned through the armored hull, through numerous walls, decks, robots, and machinery, and out the far side, where it destroyed another engine.  
All the power breakers blew inside the palace. The ARK cannon subsided into silence, smoke and vapor rising from its throat. But it had not broken, as Ramussan had feared.  
The Fellstorm, a hole burned through it and missing two engines, seemed to stagger in the air. Fire alarms screeched inside. It lurched this way and that, then settled downward, straight into the trees, in an emergency landing. The trees acted like a bed of nails, tearing away armor, fuel lines, wings, and damaging the other engines.  
Tails ran inside the palace, delirious with joy. "We did it! We did it!"  
In his headset, Amy and Sticks were cheering, too. But where was everybody else?  
He arrived in the main hall, panting and clutching a stitch in his side. Shadow and Maria weren't there. Of course, they'd probably gone down to the Master Emerald chamber.  
"Guys!" he yelled as he galloped down the stairs. "It worked! I blew up the Fellstorm!"  
He ran through the antechamber with the young chaos crystal, straight to the emerald chamber doors, without looking into the side room. As he burst inside, there was a funny cracking sound, like fireworks. Something metal sparked off the lintel just above his head.  
Tails whipped through the doors and whirled around, snatching a wrench out of his tool belt. The chamber door swung shut. Someone had shot at him and barely missed.  
"Tails," Knuckles's voice said, sounding horrified.  
The fox turned. Knuckles and Gladiolus sat on the pyramid's bottom step with Metal Sonic supported between them. They gazed at him, eyes wide and mouths open.  
Tails pointed at the door. "Who shot at me?"  
"The bat," Knuckles said. "She already got me." He lifted his hand away from his chest. He'd been holding Metal Sonic's glowing hand there. A hole still oozed an ugly red.  
Tails ran to him, realization hitting him. "Knuckles! You're alive! And the bat shot you? That's not fair!" He gave the echidna an awkward side-hug.  
Knuckles returned it, grinning wearily. He looked tired and strained, his red fur still damp. "She almost took you out, too."  
"She has Maria," Gladiolus said.  
Tails stood very still. The bat had Maria. This was the very worst scenario. "Well ... Ram and I blew up the Fellstorm. So she doesn't have anywhere to take her."  
Knuckles inhaled. "Tails! Does your headset work?"  
Tails touched it. "Yeah, why?"  
"Quick, warn everybody that Maria's captured and the bat is trying to murder us! If Amy or Sticks or Sonic walk in here-"  
Tails switched to the public channel. "Hey guys, I got some good news and some bad news."  
Amy, Sticks, and Ramussan made questioning sounds.  
"The good news is, Knuckles is alive! He's sitting right here."  
Amy exclaimed, "Oh, I'm so glad!"  
"I knew it," Sticks said smugly.  
Ramussan all but screamed, "Guardian!" Then, at more normal volumes, he whimpered, "Tell him to never, ever do that to me again."  
Tails looked at Knuckles. "Ram says to never do that again."  
Knuckles nodded. "I'll warn him first next time."  
Tails drew a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. "The bad news ... is that the bat has captured Maria. And she shot Knuckles. And Metal Sonic, I think. And she almost shot me."  
Ramussan said, "What?" in a quiet, deadly tone.  
Amy said, "Oh no! Sit tight, Tails. We're coming! Ram, let us ride the robot dragons."  
"I'm bringing my dragons in," the AI said, still in that quiet, dangerous voice. "And I'm going to tear that bat apart."  
"Where's Sonic?" Tails said. "Has anybody seen him?"  
"He was going aboard the Fellstorm," Amy's voice broke. "He ... he said he was going to try to find Shadow, and they ..."  
Knuckles closed his eyes, his lips pressing together in a silent expression of grief.  
"The Fellstorm didn't crash," Tails assured everyone. "It just ... landed. Really quickly. And the cannon didn't hit the bridge, just the main body of the ship. Sonic would have been on the bridge. Right?" He was grasping at straws, trying to give himself hope as well as everyone else.  
Ramussan said, "I'm detecting a surge of chaos energy. I recommend-" His voice slurred. Up on its pedestal, the Master Emerald dimmed. Everyone looked up at it in shock. Its gentle glow had faded to a spark, the gem itself going nearly black. On the headset, Amy and Sticks made an awful sound-a scream that died away into sobs and whimpers.  
"What's happening?" Tails exclaimed, holding his headset in his ear. "Guys, what's wrong? What happened?"  
Silence. Amy and Sticks said nothing. Neither did Ramussan. Tails clicked through all the channels. "Hello? Hello! Anybody there? What happened?" He looked up at the darkened Master Emerald, heart pounding, trying not to hyperventilate. "Nobody's answering. Ramussan said something about a chaos surge ..."  
Gladiolus jumped to her feet, head turned, staring in the direction of the main hall. "Fith have mercy," she whispered.  
Tails had forgotten about Glad's chaos eye. "What do you see?"  
She stared through the wall, both hands over her mouth. "I shouldn't be able to see them," she breathed. "I can't see through the palace walls. But ... oh Fith ... they've got Sonic and Shadow, but they've changed them."  
"Changed them how?" Knuckles demanded. He tried to stand up, but had to sit down again, holding his wound and looking as if he wanted to throw up from the pain.  
"Tails," Glad whispered, "hide, quick. They're coming down the stairs."  
The fox opened his mouth to argue, but Knuckles snarled, "They're probably coming to kill us all, kid. Now go hide!"  
Tails spun in a circle, so terrified that he didn't know what to do first. He ran to Knuckles and hugged him again, then dashed behind the pyramid.

* * *

"Glad," Knuckles said, very softly.  
She turned to him, red tears running out from under her eyepatch.  
"You hide, too," he told her.  
"But they're coming here," she whispered. "And you're wounded."  
"I don't want to see you hurt," he whispered hoarsely. "Not again. Not after Chaos ..." He trailed off and swallowed. The pain of the bullet wound was like a constant alarm in his brain, making it hard to think. Metal Sonic's healing powers had gone dark with the Master Emerald.  
Glad looked at him, then at the door. "I'm such a coward," she sobbed. Then she ran to join Tails behind the pyramid.  
Knuckles gently laid Metal Sonic on the step behind him. In his head, the robot said, "I apologize for my waning powers. I have lost my center. The darkness is deepening."  
"I know," Knuckles murmured. The Master Emerald's dimness was more than just a gem losing its glow. It was inside him, too-an eclipse of light and strength. The longer the gem stayed dark, the more Knuckles floundered inside himself. He was going back to the person he had been before Angel Island, before the chaos emerald on the beach had addled his mind. Back to the musclebound meathead who concealed his intellect beneath a mask of ignorance.  
Voices and footsteps outside. Knuckles waited, straining to reach through the darkness inside him, finding no light.  
The huge door slowly swung open. Sonic stepped in, pushing the door open. He walked with his head hanging and shoulders slumped. His spines sagged. The only time Knuckles had ever seen Sonic look like that was when he had almost died of pneumonia as a kid.  
"Sonic," Knuckles said in shock.  
Sonic turned his head a little and looked at him. Sonic's green eyes had turned gray. There was no life in them anymore, no spark. What had they done to him?  
NME entered the emerald chamber.  
First came a blue tiger in a somewhat rumpled business suit. Chaos crystal blazed on her fingers, the brightest lights in the room. Behind her came Shadow, head bowed in the same attitude as Sonic. He entered the room and stood to one side, like a servant, eyes on the floor. The red had left the stripes on his spines. His eyes, too, were gray.  
Next came a red wolf with a bandage around his head, carrying a lantern. It provided a sickly blue-green light, a mockery of the Master Emerald's color. It washed everyone's faces in zombie-like shadows.  
Amy and Sticks entered next, hands tied behind their backs, their mouths taped shut, unhurt but terrified. A hyena walked behind them, smiling.  
The blue tiger closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. "Ah, the smell of fresh blood and defeat." She opened her eyes and smiled at Knuckles, showing her fangs. "I am Tasha Hunter, CEO of National Machine Enterprises. And we have completely abolished your chaos web."  
As it had his whole life, Knuckles's mask of ignorance kicked into action. "Yeah, you must have, because there's no spiders here."  
A tiny, confused crease formed between Tasha's eyebrows. She smoothed it away with a laugh. "Without your precious Master Emerald, you're no longer a Guardian of anything. You're just an average echidna."  
"Of above-average strength," Knuckles added.  
"And less than average intelligence," Sonic said.  
Knuckles glanced at him. Sonic stood with his head bowed, staring at the floor. But maybe something about Knuckles's reversion had jogged his mind a little.  
Tasha walked to Knuckles and stood over him, playing with the crystal rings on her fingers. Her yellow eyes scanned his face, taking in his paleness, the strain, the blood still seeping from his bullet wound.  
"I was going to kill you," she said, tail twitching. "But Chaos broke you first. And without your precious Master Emerald, you'll die anyway. So I'll let you live. You're welcome."  
"Thanks?" Knuckles said.  
Tasha brushed by him and climbed the pyramid steps toward the Master Emerald. "What a beautiful gem!" she proclaimed, her voice echoing around the cave. "Yet even it has dimmed in the face of our chaos web. Regis, this will take both of us."  
"Right," said the wolf. "Before you get carried away, here is the chaos girl."  
The white bat walked in, escorting Maria by one arm. Knuckles's heart lurched, then began to weep inside him.  
Maria wore handcuffs, her hands bound before her. Her face was colorless, her golden hair a pale white in the lantern's lurid light. But what hurt Knuckles was her eyes. The blue glow had gone. The violent, powerful life inside her was extinguished. She was nothing but a thin, pale human, sickly, tired, and frightened. She looked around at her friends, hurt and changed, and at the Master Emerald, gone dark in the face of NME's awful power.  
"What have you done?" she said. Her voice was soft, but it carried through the room.  
Tasha gazed at Maria from the pyramid's top, lips parted, eyes wide, as if she wanted to spring down the steps and gobble her up. "And here you are," Tasha said. "The avatar of the Master Emerald." She pointed at the wolf. "Regis. Bind her in the web until she submits to joining us."  
Maria's eyes darted to Knuckles, then Shadow. Knuckles watched her in anguish. He should jump up, break those handcuffs, and smash Tasha's head like a coconut. But the pain confined him tighter than any ropes or magic.  
Shadow lifted his head enough to look at Maria. He opened his mouth, trying to force his way through the dreadful spells that bound him. But he couldn't. His chin fell to his chest again.  
Maria drew herself up, lifting her chin to Tasha. "That won't be necessary. I will join you of my own free will."  
The words hammered Knuckles's skull like death blows. "You what?" he stammered. "No - you can't!"  
"I can," Maria said, gazing at him steadily. She seemed to become harder, stronger now that her will was set. "Tasha. Regis. Hylee. My new family."  
She was betraying them. Knuckles choked. Maria - kind, gentle, caring Maria - was abandoning them when they needed her most. He searched for the words that might convince her otherwise, but he had gone dark inside. Nothing was left but his own feeble mind.  
Maria nodded to Sonic, Shadow, Amy, and Sticks. "Leave them. I don't want them with us." Her voice was gentle, but the words were cruel.  
"You know," Tasha said, "I was going to keep the hedgehog as slaves, but you're right. Now that we have you, we don't need their pathetic power. Hylee, cut them from our web. Leave them bound."  
Knuckles watched as the hyena made slashing motions with one hand. Sonic and Shadow both slumped to the floor like puppets with the strings cut. So much for any hope of them rescuing her down the line. Knuckles's imagination spun him a picture of Maria, dressed in a matching business suit with her hair cropped short, commanding robots to kill and destroy, melded to the minds of these four putrid Mobians.  
"My fee," Rouge the bat said suddenly. "I claim the Master Emerald."  
Tasha, Hylee, and Regis all shot her a savage look. Maria didn't move.  
Rouge laid a hand on the girl's arm and aimed her pistol at her face. "Now now, don't make me threaten our new sister. You told me to name my fee. And I did."  
Tasha forced a smile. "We're taking the Master Emerald anyway. You can be its new keeper." Her eyes flicked over Knuckles dismissively.  
Rouge holstered her gun. "Excellent. Now. Let's get moving."  
Knuckles sat there, sick and suffering, as one by one, the hyena, wolf, and bat passed him to climb the pyramid stairs. Maria was last. Still handcuffed, she hesitated beside him. He looked up and saw the tears in her eyes.  
"Be strong," she whispered. Then she climbed the steps after the others.  
Be strong. She had just stabbed them in the back, and all she could say to him was be strong?  
He knew they were taking the Master Emerald via chaos control. He couldn't watch. He buried his head in his hands to make sure he didn't see it.  
There was a flash of light from the top of the pyramid, then darkness fell. No lantern. No Emerald. A beam of light shone in the door from the young crystal groves outside, and that was all.  
Knuckles sat there, empty. Darkness was inside and outside him. There was nothing left. No Master Emerald. No Maria. No island crew magic binding them together.  
Footsteps shuffled on the marble floor. Tails and Gladiolus appeared, creeping out of hiding, jumpy and frightened. Tails carried a small spark of green in one hand.  
"Knuckles," he said in a small voice, "I found this."  
He dropped the chaos emerald into Knuckles's cupped hands.

* * *

When Rouge snapped the dampening handcuffs on Maria, it was the most awful thing that has ever been done to the girl. And she had survived gene-splicing treatments.  
For fifty years Maria had communed with the Master Emerald, its power penetrating her cells, changing her into a different kind of being. She had been constantly aware of Shadow, his thoughts, his feelings. When she had been freed from suspension, she had rapidly forged bonds with Knuckles, Sonic, and the others, gathering them into a web of friendship and love. She cherished each of them, subtly empowering them with her affection.  
The dampening handcuffs cut her off from all that in one awful instant. Rouge had not needed to tranquilize her. Maria fainted from the shock, not the drug. The drug kept her on the edge of consciousness, but Maria welcomed it. Consciousness had turned silent, cold and empty. Her body could not survive long without the Master Emerald. It was like they had removed her heart and replaced it with a machine that worked too slowly. She would live for a while yet, but death crept closer with every hour.  
Then Rouge dragged her to her feet and presented her to NME.  
Maria experienced shock after shock. The Master Emerald was nearly dead. Knuckles was barely hanging on, his open wound begging for bandages and healing. Sonic and Shadow were wrapped in awful gray cords that tangled around their hearts and souls, cutting them off from their own selves. Amy and Sticks were untouched by the horrible web, but only because Tasha counted them useless. There was no sign of Tails and Gladiolus.  
Then there was Tasha, Regis, and Hylee. All of them reeked of chaos power - the negative kind. Their chaos web, instead of being made of love and friendship, was a cold, cunning thing of aligned goals and a mutual obsession with power. But they didn't know that they drew upon only the negative aspect of chaos power. It was strong, yes, but alien to Maria's kind heart. If she stepped into their web, accepted their power, that negative, dirty power would flow into her, too.  
Her being recoiled in horror from the very idea. But as she watched, Knuckles wilted a little more. Sonic struggled a little, pushing at the cords that held his heart. And Shadow ... Shadow reached for Maria with his heart, pathetically, weakly, begging for her to help him. She could not hear him because of the bindings, but she could see him trying.  
Maria made her choice before Tasha threatened her. She would enter their filthy web of greed and lust, if only to save her dear friends. And maybe ... maybe she might find the strength to overcome it.  
Knuckles was devastated. As she was forced to follow her enemies up the stairs, she paused beside him. Her enemies would hear anything she said. What message might convey her intent, the sacrifice she was making?  
"Be strong," she whispered. Inside her head, she added, "I'll return to you. You will always be my family." But she couldn't say that aloud.  
Knuckles didn't understand. He turned away from her, thinking she had betrayed him. Her eyes brimming with unshed tears, Maria climbed the pyramid.  
The Master Emerald remained dark. Maria let them use chaos control to transport her and it to the bridge of the damaged Fellstorm. There her knees gave way and she fell onto the scuffed floor.  
"Release her, Rouge," Tasha said. "There's no need to keep her dampened now that she's agreed to join us."  
The bat stooped over Maria with the key to the handcuffs. As they fell away, life crept back into her cold body.  
The Master Emerald rested on its side in the center of the room. Tasha, Regis and Hylee walked around and around it, touching each facet. Maria could see them connecting their dirty gray web to it, siphoning its power. But the glow was slowly returning to its center. They had dampened it along with her.  
"May I touch it, please?" Maria said.  
Tasha connected a strand to Maria's heart. "Of course. We know what you are. Go. Feed."  
Feed? Of course, they would see it that way. Maria pressed both hands to the great emerald. Life and light swirled back into her body and soul. She inhaled, drawing in its strength.  
The members of NME stood back and watched. The flicker of chaos in their eyes told her that they could see both the web and her own power. As she revived, they began to cast cords at her, binding her to each of them in turn.  
This was no friendly regard of mutual respect. This was cold greed and hunger and malice. She felt Tasha's burning ambition, Regis's cool, careful cunning, and Hylee's logic that reduced the world to mathematics. She felt Rouge's disregard for anything but her own appetite. Everything about them was the base nature. There was nothing higher-no loyalty, or courage, or love. They functioned like dumb animals, devoid of the higher virtues.  
The Master Emerald burned with both positive and negative energy. No wonder they had to dampen it. As its power returned, she felt them cringing from its great, kind, joyful aspects, where truth and justice flamed with their own light.  
"Ugh!" Regis exclaimed. "Can't we do something about that unfiltered energy flow? It's giving me a headache."  
"Let me try," Tasha said, lashing cords around the Master Emerald. The glow flickered and dimmed.  
"It's all combined," Maria said. "You can't shut off one without shutting off the other."  
"Watch me," Tasha growled. She wound her cords and laid them in a circular spiderweb pattern, filtering the positive energy away and letting only the negative shine through. The emerald took on an ugly yellowish hue.  
Maria felt as if the cords were upon her, too. Vicious thoughts of seeking power danced through her head - of killing these four, seizing Angel Island, and ruling the world as the Chaos Queen.  
"Ah, that's better," said the red wolf, flinging himself into a chair. "Now to get this blasted ship off the ground."  
"Let me access the damage reports," Hylee said, turning to the computer. "The repair drones have been busy since the crash."  
Tasha stepped to her own console. "Yes, the fires are finally out."  
Rouge produced a jeweler's kit and began to study the Master Emerald with a magnifying glass.  
None of them paid attention to Maria. None of them saw her drowning in negative power, sinking under the weight of their chaos web. Maria stood still, giving no sign of her struggle.  
"Help me!" she cried inside herself. "They're turning me into a monster! I'd rather die!"  
Shadow's presence brushed her soul.  
It was the smallest fraction of a touch, but it was enough for Maria to orient to him. He was weak, but his link to her was there, thin as a single hair. Here was love.  
She took hold of that slender line and pulled it in, sheltering it from the fat cords of the NME web. "Shadow," she thought to him, "thank you, my love. They shan't corrupt me so easily."  
She reached out again, hardly daring to hope. If she could find Shadow, what about Knuckles, her other lifeline? Her groping mental fingers touched their connection.  
Here was loyalty, and grief, and deep, volcanic anger. He believed that she had betrayed them. But his anger was so deep because it burned atop love, his fathomless devotion to her that he didn't even know existed.  
Maria pulled in that thread, too, treasuring it. "My love," she whispered to Shadow, "tell them that I need their help."


	13. Chapter 13

Tails and Gladiolus had wasted no time in untying Amy and Sticks. They all moved out of the dark, empty emerald chamber into the better-lit antechamber outside.  
Knuckles only managed to walk halfway. He had to crawl the rest of the way, and now lay on his back on the floor, eyes closed.  
Amy and Glad dragged Metal Sonic after him. "This has got to work," Amy said as they laid the robot beside Knuckles. She closed Mecha's fingers around the green chaos emerald and pressed his other hand to Knuckles's wound again.  
This time the healing symbols on his palms lit brightly. Knuckles groaned as a wave of warmth spread into him, the healing itself painful.  
Tails stood in front of Sonic. They looked at each other, Sonic with his drooping spines and gray eyes.  
"Sonic," Tails whispered. "What did they do to you?"  
Sonic lifted his head and drew a breath as if about to speak. Then he sighed and let his head hang again. Tails took his hand and drew him into the antechamber with the others. Sonic didn't resist, moving like a sleepwalker.  
Gladiolus went to Shadow.  
The black hedgehog was struggling, the red in his spines brightening and dimming. Glad watched him, her arms tucked inside her damp dreadlocks for warmth. "Shadow ... can we help you?"  
"Maria," he said, slurring badly. "She needs ... help."  
Glad straightened, a grain of hope entering her heart. "You can still feel her?"  
Shadow nodded.  
She had to lead him into the other room, too. He couldn't seem to move without orders. "He says Maria needs help, everybody."  
"You heard her," Knuckles said from the floor. "She sold us out."  
"It was to save us, Knux," Amy said, from where she was rubbing Sonic's hands and face. "It's the oldest ploy in the book."  
"You think so?" Knuckles lifted his head to glare at her properly. "You think Maria has read that book? They had the Master Emerald. She goes where it goes."  
Tails said to Amy out of the corner of his mouth, "I think Knux is feeling better."  
Knuckles curled up and groaned through his teeth. A moment later, his healing wound finally expelled the bullet. It had been inside him the whole time. Metal Sonic's eyes lit up with satisfaction.  
Amy guided one of Sonic's hands to one of the young chaos crystals. "Here, Sonic. Does this help?"  
"Nothing helps," Sonic muttered. "Nothing matters. I don't care."  
Tails and Amy exchanged baffled glances.  
Gladiolus thought this was a good idea. She took Shadow to the other crystal cluster and put his hands on it.  
Shadow shuddered and turned his face away. "It burns!"  
"Does it burn in a good way?" Glad asked nervously. "Like, maybe it's burning up what they did to you?"  
Shadow pulled away and sat on the floor, arms wrapped around himself. "No. Maria. She needs us."  
Glad turned to Knuckles, afraid of what she might see. He might be dying, or bleeding out, or anything. But when she looked, he was actually sitting up. His color looked better, too. She hurried up and knelt beside him. "The healing is working!"  
"Yeah, finally." Knuckles held out the flattened bullet. "That was stuck in me the whole time. No wonder I felt like garbage."  
Glad looked at the piece of lead in his hand. Then she looked into his blue eyes, so dark and intense. "I think," she murmured, "I think I love you."  
His brooding look fled, replaced by complete shock. "What did you say?"  
She hadn't meant to say that at all. Glad back pedaled, heat rising to her face and making her cheeks burn. "Sorry, I meant, just that, all of us. All together. Love. It's a thing." Why couldn't she make the words work? She just wanted to run away and hide in a hole now.  
Amy came to her rescue. "I think what she's trying to say," the pink hedgehog said, "is that whatever this chaos web is, we can reconnect it. We're all still friends, with or without the Master Emerald."  
Everyone gazed at her, taking in her words.  
Amy turned in a circle, meeting every eye. "Shadow says Maria needs help. I imagine they're doing to her what's been done to Sonic and Shadow. If we put our strength together, maybe we can give enough to Shadow that it'll be like - like the Master Emerald for her."  
"Yes," Sticks agreed, bobbing her head up and down. "Join hands, everybody."  
They formed an awkward circle, even hauling Metal Sonic into it. "I'll fix you," Tails told the robot cheerfully. "After the ARK cannon? You'll be a cinch."  
Mecha nodded.  
Knuckles found himself holding hands with Glad and Sonic. Sonic's hand was icy through his glove. Knuckles gazed at his profile, his colorless eyes. "Sonic ... what happened?"  
"I don't care," Sonic told him.  
"Okay, everybody," Amy said from Sonic's other side. "Let's send strength."  
"And how do we do that?" Knuckles snapped. "Wrap it up in a package and mail it?"  
Amy frowned at him. "Stop being so nasty."  
"Maria betrayed us!" Knuckles bellowed, making them all jump. "She cut us loose! Why should we bother? Let her go!"  
"I don't care," Sonic repeated.  
"Well, I do!" Knuckles snarled. "I probably care more than any of you. And what's that got me? I got chewed up by Chaos and shot, that's what it got me! Now the Master Emerald is gone! I've failed as a Guardian, failed as a person, failed failed failed!"  
His rage and pain spread like shockwaves through their circle, spread from person to person. It burned into the cords of apathy binding Sonic and Shadow, loosening them.  
"I don't care," Sonic repeated, lifting his head as if waking up.  
"Say that again and I'll break your teeth," Knuckles growled.  
Sonic blinked and shook his head a little, as if shaking off invisible dust. "Don't you get it? That's what's wrong. I don't care. Make me care!"  
"I care," Shadow said from across the circle. "But not enough."  
"Make you care?" Knuckles said with a bitter laugh. "Make you care that Maria will wear a suit like the rest of NME? Make you care that she'll come back someday to destroy us? Make you care that she went to them willingly? If you don't care about that, then I can't make you."  
These thoughts were so awful that they shocked all of them awake, Shadow and Sonic included. A little green faded into Sonic's eyes. Shadow's spines glowed a faint pinkish.  
"Maria," Shadow whispered. "I'm so sorry ..."  
"I'm not!" Knuckles yelled. "Maria, I know you can hear me! And I'm not sorry! I should have fed you to Chaos when he asked!"  
"Chaos asked for Maria?" Sonic gasped.  
Every eye was fixed on Knuckles now. Knuckles was working himself into such a rage that the room seemed to be tinted red. He felt Maria nearby, almost as if she was standing behind him, listening to him pour forth the suffering he had endured in silence for so long.  
"Yes," Knuckles snarled. "Chaos wanted her. He wanted Glad. He didn't want me."  
"How ..." Sonic struggled against his bonds. "How did you survive, then?"  
The memory of the monster's words crashed into Knuckles's mind, along with acute embarrassment. Even his anger couldn't make him tell that particular secret.  
"Chaos couldn't kill me," Knuckles said, his voice dropping. With the embarrassment came a sudden cooling of his temper, and shame at the way he had been acting. "He tried. But I had fulfilled the legal requirements he was after. The only way he could get rid of me was to let me go."  
"You were under water for hours," Amy pointed out.  
"Chaos is a meta wisp," Knuckles said. "I merged into him."  
"You didn't know that beforehand?" Shadow said, staring. His eyes were almost their normal shade of crimson. "You just assumed you were going to die?"  
"Yeah," Knuckles said. "And you know what? None of it mattered. Chaos couldn't remove Glad's curse. Maria was still taken. We've lost the Master Emerald. I'm not even the Guardian anymore. Who knows what happened to Ramussan. They'll probably turn him against us."

* * *

The group wasn't consciously sending strength to Maria. They were listening to Knuckles in awe and horror as he finally let them see the size of the burden he had been carrying.  
Maria listened through Shadow, his ears conveying every word to her mind. This was different from the cold hate and malice that entwined her with NME. They didn't truly care about each other.  
But Knuckles cared. He cared so deeply that he was in agony with it. The anger was the only way he could express the magnitude of his caring. He had gone to Chaos to protect her.  
Maria had known that Chaos wanted her. He had whispered to her, too. But she hadn't known that Knuckles had known this. He had simply carried on, doing his duty, until the day he went to the monster on her behalf.  
Her heart ached for him, for them all. She felt the binding melting away from Shadow's heart, felt him begin to care at last. He had been so angry for so long that he had never let himself care before. But now, as the evil power peeled away, Shadow began to emerge as that kind, fiery hedgehog she had known back in the lab half a century ago.  
Love. It bound all of them together, deeper than romance, deeper than superficial affection. This love suffered long and remained kind. This love hoped, trusted, and believed, even when betrayed and crushed. It wanted the best for others and put itself last.  
This love kindled a flame deep inside Maria. She closed her eyes, feeling the purifying warmth rising inside her. It flowed up the lines that connected her to Shadow and Knuckles, strengthening both the pathways and recipients.

* * *

Knuckles gasped and stiffened as the power rolled into him. Light blazed to life inside him, erasing the darkness. In his mind's eye, he saw the Master Emerald - or was it Maria? - glowing brilliant, living green.  
The memories of the ancients sprang to life in his mind, thoughts of Angel Island and its secrets flashing before his eyes in brilliant color. "You are the Guardian," the statue in the forest seemed to whisper again. "Protector, shield, caregiver, friend."  
Across the circle, Shadow laughed out loud. The color flooded back into his stripes, making them glow brilliant red. Between Shadow and Knuckles, the power spread between them all, reviving, brightening, restoring. Only Gladiolus disliked it, because it made her chaos eye hurt like it was on fire.  
"It's Maria!" Shadow exclaimed. "She's fighting back!"  
"Come on, Maria!" Sonic exclaimed, shaking off the last of the evil chaos web, his eyes emerald-green. "You can take them!"  
Knuckles said nothing. He stood there enraptured, engulfed in pure joy. He hadn't failed. He had never stopped being the Guardian. Even his temper tantrum had helped them see what he had been through.  
Now his Guardian instincts were back, he realized, in the midst of the delight of his friends, that Glad was being hurt. He broke the circle and led her aside, away from the blazing chaos power. She pressed one hand against her eyepatch. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm ruining the magic."  
"No, you're not," Knuckles whispered back. "Just stay here. I have to help them." He returned to the circle, acutely aware of a new dimension in his heart that he was terrified to explore.

* * *

Maria felt it, and understood it, and laughed.  
Tasha, Hylee, Regis and Rouge looked up from their activities to see Maria engulfed in green fire that seemed to radiate from inside her. She laid a hand on the Master Emerald and burned away the web that filtered away the goodness.  
"Stop her!" Tasha shrieked. "She's defiling our chaos web!"  
Maria pressed at the thick gray cords around her. Her green, beautiful light began to creep along them, back toward NME.  
"I can't stop her!" Regis cried. "Cut the web, quickly!"  
"But the power!" Tasha cried, watching the light crawl toward her. "If I cut the web, we'll lose the power!"  
"Do it, fool!" Hylee snarled. The hyena slashed at the cords binding himself to Maria, letting them fall slack.  
Rouge pulled out her gun, but hesitated. "I went to a lot of trouble to catch her ..."  
Tasha clawed at the web, throwing up cross-cords and webbing, trying to block the oncoming good with more evil. "Knock her out! Stop her, don't kill her!"  
Rouge sprang forward and swung the butt of her pistol at Maria's head.  
It struck an invisible force two inches from Maria and glanced off. Maria turned her glittering blue eyes on the bat. "No one can harm me now."  
Rouge gazed into those fathomless, alien eyes, and saw her own twisted reflection. She reeled away, clutching her gun, tearing away her connection to the chaos web. Then she ran for the door, leaped out and flew away, fleeing the Fellstorm, fleeing Angel Island.  
Tasha and Regis were the only ones left who were connected to Maria. They flung cords at her, seeking to bind her in apathy, remove her ability to care, silence her in gray tolerance. But Maria's fire was too strong. It consumed the chaos web, fiber by fiber, creeping closer to the wolf and tiger.  
"You know," Regis said, "you should probably cut your connection to the ship."  
"Never!" Tasha shrieked. "I built this web! I collected all of you! I created NME from nothing! No touchy-feely love power is going to destroy that!"  
"Suit yourself." Regis cut his own numerous connections, slicing this way and that as the green fire reached for him. Then he and Hylee abandoned the bridge, running down the length of the Fellstorm.  
Tasha snarled and pushed back, directly at Maria, drawing on the power of her chaos rings. "No love is greater than my power, human! Fear is the greatest power there is!"  
"You're wrong," Maria said, the blue in her eyes being engulfed by green. "Perfect love casts out fear."  
The gray and the green pushed against each other, the colors sweeping back and forth across the web. The room began to fill with smoke as the computers began to cook. The Master Emerald blazed brighter and brighter.  
Maria laid one hand on it, her whole body shining the same color as the gem. "I pity you," she said softly. "Have you never loved before?"  
"Years ago," Tasha spat through bared teeth. "Love made me weak. It left me vulnerable. Power insulates me from pain. I swore I would never be hurt again." She forced a laugh. "I can feel your pain, Maria. All your little friends have suffered such torment. You call that love?"  
"Love endures all things," Maria replied. "And at the end, pain only deepens it." Her light burned along the ropes toward the tiger. "You don't have to end here. You can flee like your companions. Flee and find hope!"  
"I know what your power will do to me, to this ship," Tasha snarled. "There's no escape for any of us."  
"No," Maria said sadly. "And justice must be done. Your evil must be punished. You who tormented Shadow, who sparked wars between countries in order to sell them weapons, who built your fortune on the backs of suffering and dying people. You who abandoned love in exchange for power." Maria turned her face away. "Oh Fith, I pity you. But the end has come."  
Maria blazed into a green pillar of light, her human form disappearing completely. The Master Emerald brightened like the ARK cannon.  
Tasha screamed as pure, compressed goodness burned into her hands, her neck, her heart. She could have embraced it, but she rejected it to the last, trying to hold it off, trying to stifle it, kill it, drown it.  
The bridge exploded in a ball of white fire, tinged green at the edges. The heat tore through the whale-like head of the Fellstorm, burning through deck after deck, spreading along the ship's length. Fuel and battery acid exploded. Red fire joined the green. The explosions shook the ground, rattling the island, throwing debris into the air for miles.

* * *

In the palace, the circle of friends dissolved as everyone ran for the stairs to see what was happening outside. Outside the west door, they stared, dumbfounded, at the utter destruction their little circle had caused.  
"That wasn't me," Sonic said, shielding his eyes from a particularly bright flash. "You guys saw. I was with you the whole time."  
"Me too," Tails said. "I only, you know, fired the ARK cannon at it."  
"Delayed reaction," Amy suggested. "A fire reached the fuel tanks."  
"Yeah, that," Knuckles said. "That seems reasonable. So, who gets to clean all that up?"  
Nobody answered. They watched the burning, exploding ship in the distance until the fires subsided into a great black cloud of smoke.  
"Do you think we should help?" Amy said doubtfully. "I mean, look for survivors or something."  
"Do you honestly want to?" Knuckles said. "Look at what they did to us."  
"Plus it's majorly on fire and exploding," Sonic pointed out. "What happened to the robot dragons? You could send those."  
"They collapsed when Ramussan shorted out," Amy said sadly. "Those NME people just appeared and attacked Sticks and me."  
"Ram stopped talking when we lost the Master Emerald," Knuckles said. "I imagine the emerald's still in there. On fire. Plus ... you know, Maria."  
Nobody spoke the dreadful thoughts that went with this. Had she - or they - caused that explosion? Who could hope to survive destruction of such magnitude?  
Knuckles glanced at the clouds, which were gathering for their usual afternoon thunderstorm. "At least the rain will keep the fire from spreading."  
Shadow, who had been standing there with his arms folded, suddenly straightened and looked around. "Maria?"  
Everyone looked. There was a shimmer in the air nearby that was slowly becoming darker and more solid. As it faded into reality, they saw that it was Maria and the Master Emerald. The emerald was smoke-stained around the edges, and heat radiated from it. But Maria was ghostly. They could see the trees through her.  
"Maria!" Shadow cried. "Don't say you're dead!"  
She looked around at their shocked faces. "Don't worry, I'm very much alive. The Master Emerald has accelerated me, and I'm not certain how to come back yet. Would you mind taking the Master Emerald back where it belongs? I thought I was bringing it to you all in the Emerald chamber, but you were outside instead."  
Sonic pointed at the burning ship. "Was that you? Because we were over here."  
Maria smiled a sad smile. "Unfortunately, yes. Tasha is dead. I'm not certain about the others-they had the sense to run."  
There was an uncomfortable silence. Maria began to fade away. "I'll find you later," she called, and vanished.

* * *

Hylee Snicker and Regis Howell ran for their lives, away from the Fellstorm, plunging recklessly through the jungle. Burning debris rained down through the canopy. Explosions shook the ground beneath their feet.  
"How do we get off this accursed island?" Regis shouted to Hylee.  
"Swim it!" the hyena called back. "Angel Island is only half a mile from Bygone Island! From there we can catch a helicopter to anywhere."  
"I don't know if I can swim half a mile," Regis whined, holding his side.  
They kept running. The noise of destruction faded behind them. They finally outdistanced the falling debris, too.  
After an hour, the pair staggered to a halt, gasping. They had reached the island's edge. Waves lapped the rocks, and the blue ocean spread between them and Bygone Island in the distance. They had arrived at the northern edge, not ideal for swimming. A full two miles lay between them and freedom.  
"I can't do it," Regis gasped. "It's too far."  
Hylee Snicker looked at the chaos crystal rings on his fingers and growled. They barely glowed at all, separated from their chaos web and the power it had contained. "I don't have the energy for a chaos control. Bah!" He tore a dead limb off a tree and tossed it into the water. It floated, bobbing to and fro on the waves.  
"There," he said, pointing at it. "We'll hold onto that and paddle our way there. Simple."  
Regis reluctantly agreed, locating a thick, dry limb of his own. They launched themselves into the water, holding onto their makeshift floats.  
For a while it worked. But as they reached open water, away from the shelter of the islands, the sea grew rough. Waves slapped them, driving them apart.  
"I hope this isn't Chaos's doing," Regis panted.  
"Don't be a baby," Hylee sneered, riding a wave. "Chaos left, remember? He's no threat to us anymore."  
"But we're nearing the spot where he was," Regis whined. He scanned the waves nervously. "How would we even know where he was? He's made of water! We could be swimming in him right now!"  
"Will you shut up?" Hylee snarled. "I tell you, Chaos is gone. We'll never-"  
There was a sudden splash. Regis was in a trough between waves at the time. When he rose on the crest of another wave, the hyena was gone. Only the branch he had been using floated along, empty.  
"Hylee?" Regis yelled. "Hylee!"  
No answer. Only the endless wash of the sea.  
Regis began to scream and thrash. "I knew it! I knew it! Chaos knows we're here! He'll kill us all! I was right-"  
A powerful force swirled around Regis's waist and sucked him under. In an instant he was fifteen, twenty, thirty feet under, dropping into the cold, dark depths. A huge glowing green eye focused on him, inches from his face.  
Regis's bubbling scream abruptly cut off.

* * *

Shadow moved the Master Emerald to its shrine in a single chaos control. Once more the cavern was lit by its soft green light, like the sun through leaves.  
Knuckles went to bed and slept the rest of the day and the whole night. It was the deep, dreamless sleep of exhaustion. He had given everything, multiple times, and he had nothing left. He awoke the next morning, ate a huge breakfast, and went back to bed.  
"Let him sleep," Amy told Sonic, who was complaining. "You didn't face down Chaos and get shot, then have to fight NME."  
"I fought their robots," Sonic said sulkily. "They messed with my brain. Now look at me! One night of sleep and I'm good."  
Amy handed him a mop and bucket. "Great. Go scrub the blood off the Emerald chamber floor."  
Grumbling, Sonic took the bucket and mop and departed.  
Amy had taken charge in the aftermath of the battle with NME. She made sure everyone ate regular meals and got enough sleep. In between, they cleaned robots out of the jungle, tidied the palace, and in general put things to rights once more.  
Ramussan had been offline for hours after the Master Emerald was returned. Tails had to plumb the depths of the computer system to find and restart him. This facilitated a trip to the chaos reactor. Tails returned with a scorched smell hanging about his fur and black marks in the outline of his goggles. Ramussan booted up shortly afterward, still ready to fight NME. He was disappointed to learn that he had missed the destruction.  
When Knuckles awoke the second afternoon, he simply lay in his bunk for a long time, gazing at the stone ceiling. The island was quiet-the restful, peaceful quiet that only came after a storm. The last five days played through his head in fragments. Chaos's teeth. Gladiolus on the beach, smiling and surrounded by wisps. What had happened to the wisps, anyway? Surely they'd had the sense to flee the Fellstorm.  
His own rage in the wake of losing Maria and the Master Emerald was like a bruise in his soul. When was the last time he'd been that angry, that hopeless? He never wanted to experience that again. Gosh, what must his friends think of him? He'd been at his absolute worst, reduced to ashes by pain and despair.  
Knuckles sat up and inspected his chest. The food and rest had done him good. The bullet wound was barely a scar, the fur already growing over it. He scratched it absently. If not for the chaos emerald and Metal Sonic, he'd be dead right now.  
Gladiolus was another sore spot in his mind. He tiptoed around it, carefully thinking of everything but her. She'd seen him at rock bottom, too. He'd certainly given her every reason to hate him. But she'd let it slip that she thought she loved him.  
There. That was the sore place. Chaos's voice thundered in his memory, "You will have to marry her, fool!"  
He could fight NME. He could face the consequences of Maria betraying them. But this? He had no idea how to proceed. What should he do, just walk up and tell her that she had two choices-marry him, or die? Ugh, it made him sick all over again. He pushed it out of his mind to worry about later.  
Knuckles went to the galley and made himself an interesting meal of shredded wheat, instant soup, and cold hot dogs. He expected somebody to come along and find him, but the palace was quiet. Everybody must be outside.  
He finished his dinner slowly, then wandered down to the Master Emerald chamber. The blood had been cleaned off the marble floors, and the gem itself was back in place as if it had never left. Had it all been some kind of nightmare? He could almost believe it was, except for the scar on his chest.  
He climbed the stairs and ran his hands over the gem. "I'm descended from Angel Island's wizards," he said to himself. "Chaos didn't like it." Who were the wizards? Had they been mysterious echidnas with robes and long beards? Or had they been like him - just average chumps trying to do a job?  
As he stood there, resting his elbows on the Master Emerald and letting its power lap him, there was a shimmer in the air and Maria appeared, sitting on the gem next to him.  
She had changed her clothes to a simple white sun dress with a blue sash. Her feet were bare, her hair loose and flowing over her shoulders. But she remained a little transparent around the edges.  
"Hey," Knuckles said, trying not to show how startled he was. "Sorry for all that stuff I yelled at you."  
Maria smiled and tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. "It did seem like I was betraying you. But I had to do it, you see. They were so eager for my power, they gave me too much freedom. It was their undoing."  
Knuckles nodded. He didn't want to think about NME or betrayal or any of those big, weighty things. Or at least, only one.  
"What do I do about Gladiolus?" he said.  
Maria's smile faded. She looked away.  
Knuckles spread his hands. "Chaos explained the way her curse works. He said the only way to lift it is if I ... if I marry her."  
Maria gave him a compassionate look. "Yes. It's not easy to lift a blood curse. What Chaos didn't tell you is that even with the curse lifted, she will never regain sight in that eye. If you could, perhaps, find the chaos crystal that imparted the curse, that might help with the healing."  
Knuckles sighed. "Why can't things be easier to fix?"  
Maria shook her head. "There's more."  
He leaned his chin on his hands. "Of course there is."  
"Her curse hangs around her in a cloud of negative energy," Maria said. "When she's near me, I lose touch with Shadow ... with you ... with the Master Emerald. It's like being in NME's handcuffs again." She shuddered and rubbed her wrists.  
Knuckles gazed at her. "So, let me guess. You want me to send her home."  
It was Maria's turn to sigh. "No, more than that. Either you break her curse, or she never comes to Angel Island again."  
"That's harsh," Knuckles said, straightening up and glaring. "She doesn't have to go near you."  
Maria gestured to herself. "When I destroyed the Fellstorm, I broke some kind of barrier. I now exist as some kind of higher being. While I am more powerful now, I am also more vulnerable. I've been affected by dark energies from hundreds of miles away the last few days. I've had to learn to build protections around the island to keep them out. Gladiolus hurts me just by being here."  
Knuckles gazed into the big emerald without seeing it. "So, that's a rotten ultimatum. Marry her or never see her again, and she dies alone?"  
"You can visit her," Maria hedged.  
It was too much for Knuckles's bruised heart. He turned without a word, descended the stairs, and left. Maria blinked out of existence behind him.  
He mounted the stairs and went outside, into the jungle. He followed a path around the south side of the mountain, above the palm trees, walking without thinking, just needing to move, stretching his muscles. Feelings welled up from beneath the blankness - a fresh, painful worry he had no idea how to handle. Why did Maria have to be like that? Why couldn't she use her new superpowers to protect herself from Glad? It wasn't fair.  
He realized he was trying to formulate arguments about why Glad should stay on Angel Island. He didn't even know if she wanted to. Chaos had spit her onto the island with Knuckles, and she had been stuck here ever since.  
All he had to do was learn to chaos control, and he could see her whenever he wanted. The thought eased some of the tension inside him. He'd done it once, badly, of course. It wasn't insanely difficult. He could simply send her home and visit her whenever he wanted.  
He turned around and retraced his steps, breathing the warm breeze. As he rounded an outcrop of rock, he saw Gladiolus picking her way up the trail toward him, surrounded by a colorful flock of wisps. As he came into sight, she froze and half-turned, as if thinking of running away. The wisps trilled and bounced up and down.  
"Wait," Knuckles called, breaking into a jog.  
Gladiolus waited, her long hair billowing around her in the breeze. She backed away a step as he approached.  
"Hey," he said. "What're you doing out here?"  
"Looking for you," she said in a small voice. "You weren't anywhere inside. Amy was worried, but I could see you out here."  
"Just going for a walk," Knuckles said. "I was headed back."  
She nodded and addressed the wisps. "Go tell Amy we found him."  
The wisps chattered excitedly and flew away down the trail, intent on their mission.  
The echidnas walked down the trail, Glad keeping a cautious distance between them.  
"Why are you doing that?" Knuckles asked.  
"What?" she said without meeting his eyes.  
"Being all ... scared of me. I don't bite, honest."  
They walked for a moment in silence. Then Glad said, "Because I said something to you that maybe I shouldn't have."  
So she had been thinking about it, too. This was foreign territory for Knuckles. Well, honesty was best. "It was an awful time, Glad. Things slip out. Look at me. I went on a tirade so powerful that it blew up the Fellstorm." He pointed at the twisted ruins of the ship in the distance, half-hidden by trees.  
"Yes, and that's why-" Glad broke off.  
Knuckles braced himself for the worst. After all, the worst had already happened over and over in the past few days. Why not one more time?  
"Let me guess," he said heavily. "You got to see what a jerk I am when the chips are down, and now you want to go home as quickly as possible."  
Glad pushed back her hair and looked at him, wearing a worried frown. "No ..."  
"No? Well, how about this." Knuckles couldn't bear one more stab to the heart, so he tried to head off any potential blows. "I lost my temper. You got to see me be nasty and cruel. Hard to have feelings for a guy like that."  
She gave him another nervous look.  
"Oh, I know," Knuckles went on. "You must think I'm suicidal, feeding myself to monsters."  
Glad whirled to face him, gripping her hair in either hand. "Stop it!"  
Knuckles halted on the path, staring at her in confusion.  
"You," she stammered, choking up, "are the most wonderful person I've ever met. Stop running yourself down."  
"You're kidding," Knuckles said. "You saw me, Glad. I'm awful."  
"No you're not," she half-sobbed. "You gave yourself away until there was nothing left."  
Her words warmed him to the core. He wanted to hold her, comfort her, but he didn't know how.  
"Then why are you acting so scared of me?" he asked gently.  
Glad mopped her face on her shirt, getting herself under control. When she spoke, her voice was calmer. "Because I know you know how to break my curse. And you haven't said a word."  
Oh gosh, not this already. Knuckles danced around the question to give himself time to think. "There wasn't really time to talk. I mean, we got out of the water, walked inside, and that damn bat shot me."  
"It's something terrible, isn't it?" Glad whispered. "Like ... we have to kill puppies or something."  
"No!" Knuckles actually laughed. It felt good to laugh. It cleared his head and gave him a new angle. "I mean, it'll be difficult. There's a ... ritual. But we have to find the chaos crystal that gave you the curse."  
Glad drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "A ritual and chaos crystal. That's not as bad as I was expecting." She looked up and down the path. "I'll need to go home. Mother might still have the receipt from the sale."  
They walked down the path together. Relief made Knuckles giddy. Not only had he told her the bare-bones truth, but she was asking to go home. He might not even have to tell her that she couldn't come back.  
Glad was talking about the crystal. "I know she sold it to a broker, because there's some who go around all the islands and buy crystal from people. We were lucky one was in town that week. But I have no idea who she sells to."  
"I'll try to help as much as I can," Knuckles said. "I'll learn chaos control and come visit whenever you want."  
"Really?" Glad gave him a smile at last - a relieved, almost happy smile. "That would be wonderful. I still have to work, although ..." She glanced at the ruined Fellstorm. "If you wanted help selling the salvage from that, we could help you. We know all the buyers on Bygone."  
Knuckles grinned. Suddenly, everything was working out wonderfully. "Glad, you've just taken a huge weight off my mind."  
She shyly reached for his hand. He took it. Together they walked down the path, both of them alive with hope for the first time.

The end


End file.
